800 research outputs found
Electronic States and Magnetism of Mn Impurities and Dimers in Narrow-Gap and Wide-Gap III-V Semiconductors
Electronic states and magnetic properties of single impurity and dimer
doped in narrow-gap and wide-gap - semiconductors have been studied
systematically. It has been found that in the ground state for single
impurity, - complex is antiferromagnetic (AFM) coupling when -
hybridization is large and both the hole level and the
impurity level are close to the midgap; or very weak ferromagnetic (FM)
when is small and both and are deep in the valence band.
In dimer situation, the spins are AFM coupling for half-filled or
full-filled orbits; on the contrast, the Mn spins are double-exchange-like
FM coupling for any -orbits away from half-filling. We propose the strong
{\it p-d} hybridized double exchange mechanism is responsible for the FM order
in diluted - semiconductors
Anomalous Hall effect in field-effect structures of (Ga,Mn)As
The anomalous Hall effect in metal-insulator-semiconductor structures having
thin (Ga,Mn)As layers as a channel has been studied in a wide range of Mn and
hole densities changed by the gate electric field. Strong and unanticipated
temperature dependence, including a change of sign, of the anomalous Hall
conductance has been found in samples with the highest Curie
temperatures. For more disordered channels, the scaling relation between
and , similar to the one observed previously for
thicker samples, is recovered.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Self-compensation in manganese-doped ferromagnetic semiconductors
We present a theory of interstitial Mn in Mn-doped ferromagnetic
semiconductors. Using density-functional theory, we show that under the
non-equilibrium conditions of growth, interstitial Mn is easily formed near the
surface by a simple low-energy adsorption pathway. In GaAs, isolated
interstitial Mn is an electron donor, each compensating two substitutional Mn
acceptors. Within an impurity-band model, partial compensation promotes
ferromagnetic order below the metal-insulator transition, with the highest
Curie temperature occurring for 0.5 holes per substitutional Mn.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Spin-dependent tunneling in modulated structures of (Ga,Mn)As
A model of coherent tunneling, which combines multi-orbital tight-binding
approximation with Landauer-B\"uttiker formalism, is developed and applied to
all-semiconductor heterostructures containing (Ga,Mn)As ferromagnetic layers. A
comparison of theoretical predictions and experimental results on
spin-dependent Zener tunneling, tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR), and
anisotropic magnetoresistance (TAMR) is presented. The dependence of spin
current on carrier density, magnetization orientation, strain, voltage bias,
and spacer thickness is examined theoretically in order to optimize device
design and performance.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figures, submitted to PR
Magnetic properties and domain structure of (Ga,Mn)As films with perpendicular anisotropy
The ferromagnetism of a thin GaMnAs layer with a perpendicular easy
anisotropy axis is investigated by means of several techniques, that yield a
consistent set of data on the magnetic properties and the domain structure of
this diluted ferromagnetic semiconductor. The magnetic layer was grown under
tensile strain on a relaxed GaInAs buffer layer using a procedure that limits
the density of threading dislocations. Magnetometry, magneto-transport and
polar magneto-optical Kerr effect (PMOKE) measurements reveal the high quality
of this layer, in particular through its high Curie temperature (130 K) and
well-defined magnetic anisotropy. We show that magnetization reversal is
initiated from a limited number of nucleation centers and develops by easy
domain wall propagation. Furthermore, MOKE microscopy allowed us to
characterize in detail the magnetic domain structure. In particular we show
that domain shape and wall motion are very sensitive to some defects, which
prevents a periodic arrangement of the domains. We ascribed these defects to
threading dislocations emerging in the magnetic layer, inherent to the growth
mode on a relaxed buffer
Positional Disorder, Spin-Orbit Coupling and Frustration in GaMnAs
We study the magnetic properties of metallic GaMnAs. We calculate the
effective RKKY interaction between Mn spins using several realistic models for
the valence band structure of GaAs. We also study the effect of positional
disorder of the Mn on the magnetic properties. We find that the interaction
between two Mn spins is anisotropic due to spin-orbit coupling within both the
so-called spherical approximation and in the more realistic six band model. The
spherical approximation strongly overestimates this anistropy, especially for
short distances between Mn ions. Using the obtained effective Hamiltonian we
carry out Monte Carlo simulations of finite and zero temperature magnetization
and find that, due to orientational frustration of the spins, non-collinear
states appear in both valence band approximations for disordered, uncorrelated
Mn impurities in the small concentration regime. Introducing correlations among
the substitutional Mn positions or increasing the Mn concentration leads to an
increase in the remnant magnetization at zero temperature and an almost fully
polarized ferromagnetic state.Comment: 17 Pages, 13 Figure
Tunneling currents in ferromagnetic systems with multiple broken symmetries
SHORTENED ABSTRACT: A system exhibiting multiple simultaneously broken
symmetries offers the opportunity to influence physical phenomena such as
tunneling currents by means of external control parameters. In this paper, we
consider the broken SU(2) (internal spin) symmetry of ferromagnetic systems
coexisting with \textit{i)} the broken U(1) symmetry of superconductors and
\textit{ii)} the broken spatial inversion symmetry induced by a Rashba term in
a spin-orbit coupling Hamiltonian. In order to study the effect of these broken
symmetries, we consider tunneling currents that arise in two different systems;
tunneling junctions consisting of non-unitary spin-triplet ferromagnetic
superconductors and junctions consisting of ferromagnets with spin-orbit
coupling.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Anisotropic magnetoresistance of spin-orbit coupled carriers scattered from polarized magnetic impurities
Anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) is a relativistic magnetotransport
phenomenon arising from combined effects of spin-orbit coupling and broken
symmetry of a ferromagnetically ordered state of the system. In this work we
focus on one realization of the AMR in which spin-orbit coupling enters via
specific spin-textures on the carrier Fermi surfaces and ferromagnetism via
elastic scattering of carriers from polarized magnetic impurities. We report
detailed heuristic examination, using model spin-orbit coupled systems, of the
emergence of positive AMR (maximum resistivity for magnetization along
current), negative AMR (minimum resistivity for magnetization along current),
and of the crystalline AMR (resistivity depends on the absolute orientation of
the magnetization and current vectors with respect to the crystal axes)
components. We emphasize potential qualitative differences between pure
magnetic and combined electro-magnetic impurity potentials, between short-range
and long-range impurities, and between spin-1/2 and higher spin-state carriers.
Conclusions based on our heuristic analysis are supported by exact solutions to
the integral form of the Boltzmann transport equation in archetypical
two-dimensional electron systems with Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit
interactions and in the three-dimensional spherical Kohn-Littinger model. We
include comments on the relation of our microscopic calculations to standard
phenomenology of the full angular dependence of the AMR, and on the relevance
of our study to realistic, two-dimensional conduction-band carrier systems and
to anisotropic transport in the valence band of diluted magnetic
semiconductors.Comment: 15 pages, Kohn-Littinger model adde
Disorder, spin-orbit, and interaction effects in dilute
We derive an effective Hamiltonian for in
the dilute limit, where can be described in
terms of spin polarons hopping between the {\rm Mn} sites and coupled
to the local {\rm Mn} spins. We determine the parameters of our model from
microscopic calculations using both a variational method and an exact
diagonalization within the so-called spherical approximation. Our approach
treats the extremely large Coulomb interaction in a non-perturbative way, and
captures the effects of strong spin-orbit coupling and Mn positional disorder.
We study the effective Hamiltonian in a mean field and variational calculation,
including the effects of interactions between the holes at both zero and finite
temperature. We study the resulting magnetic properties, such as the
magnetization and spin disorder manifest in the generically non-collinear
magnetic state. We find a well formed impurity band fairly well separated from
the valence band up to for which finite size
scaling studies of the participation ratios indicate a localization transition,
even in the presence of strong on-site interactions, where is the fraction of magnetically active Mn. We study the
localization transition as a function of hole concentration, Mn positional
disorder, and interaction strength between the holes.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figure
Quantitative Study of Magnetotransport through a (Ga,Mn)As Single Ferromagnetic Domain
We have performed a systematic investigation of the longitudinal and
transverse magnetoresistance of a single ferromagnetic domain in (Ga,Mn)As. We
find that, by taking into account the intrinsic dependence of the resistivity
on the magnetic induction, an excellent agreement between experimental results
and theoretical expectations is obtained. Our findings provide a detailed and
fully quantitative validation of the theoretical description of
magnetotransport through a single ferromagnetic domain. Our analysis
furthermore indicates the relevance of magneto-impurity scattering as a
mechanism for magnetoresistance in (Ga,Mn)As.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; v2: missing references included, figures
recompressed to improve readabilit
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