No Arabic abstract
The dynamical behavior of the magnetism of diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS) has been investigated by means of atomistic spin dynamics simulations. The conclusions drawn from the study are argued to be general for DMS systems in the low concentration limit, although all simulations are done for 5% Mn-doped GaAs with various concentrations of As antisite defects. The magnetization curve, $M(T)$, and the Curie temperature $T_C$ have been calculated, and are found to be in good correspondence to results from Monte Carlo simulations and experiments. Furthermore, equilibrium and non-equilibrium behavior of the magnetic pair correlation function have been extracted. The dynamics of DMS systems reveals a substantial short ranged magnetic order even at temperatures at or above the ordering temperature, with a non-vanishing pair correlation function extending up to several atomic shells. For the high As antisite concentrations the simulations show a short ranged anti-ferromagnetic coupling, and a weakened long ranged ferromagnetic coupling. For sufficiently large concentrations we do not observe any long ranged ferromagnetic correlation. A typical dynamical response shows that starting from a random orientation of moments, the spin-correlation develops very fast ($sim$ 1ps) extending up to 15 atomic shells. Above $sim$ 10 ps in the simulations, the pair correlation is observed to extend over some 40 atomic shells. The autocorrelation function has been calculated and compared with ferromagnets like bcc Fe and spin-glass materials. We find no evidence in our simulations for a spin-glass behaviour, for any concentration of As antisites. Instead the magnetic response is better described as slow dynamics, at least when compared to that of a regular ferromagnet like bcc Fe.
We report on study of magnetic impurities spin relaxation in diluted magnetic semiconductors above Curie temperature. Systems with a high concentration of magnetic impurities where magnetic correlations take place were studied. The developed theory assumes that main channel of spin relaxation is mobile carriers providing indirect interactions between magnetic impurities. Our theoretical model is supported by experimental measurements of manganese spin relaxation time in GaMnAs by means of spin-flip Raman scattering. It is found that with temperature increase spin relaxation rate of ferromagnetic samples increases and tends to that measured in paramagnetic sample.
We present a method for performing atomistic spin dynamic simulations. A comprehensive summary of all pertinent details for performing the simulations such as equations of motions, models for including temperature, methods of extracting data and numerical schemes for performing the simulations is given. The method can be applied in a first principles mode, where all interatomic exchange is calculated self-consistently, or it can be applied with frozen parameters estimated from experiments or calculated for a fixed spin-configuration. Areas of potential applications to different magnetic questions are also discussed. The method is finally applied to one situation where the macrospin model breaks down; magnetic switching in ultra strong fields.
We study the spin dynamics of a Heisenberg model at finite temperature in the presence of an external field or a uniaxial anisotropy. For the case of the uniaxial anisotropy our simulations show that the macro moment picture breaks down. An effect which we refer to as a spin-wave instability (SWI) results in a non-dissipative Bloch-Bloembergen type relaxation of the macro moment where the size of the macro moment changes, and can even be made to disappear. This relaxation mechanism is studied in detail by means of atomistic spin dynamics simulations.
We perform a theoretical study, using {it ab initio} total energy density-functional calculations, of the effects of disorder on the $Mn-Mn$ exchange interactions for $Ga_{1-x}Mn_xAs$ diluted semiconductors. For a 128 atoms supercell, we consider a variety of configurations with 2, 3 and 4 Mn atoms, which correspond to concentrations of 3.1%, 4.7%, and 6.3%, respectively. In this way, the disorder is intrinsically considered in the calculations. Using a Heisenberg Hamiltonian to map the magnetic excitations, and {it ab initio} total energy calculations, we obtain the effective $JMn$, from first ($n=1$) all the way up to sixth ($n=6$) neighbors. Calculated results show a clear dependence in the magnitudes of the $JMn$ with the Mn concentration $x$. Also, configurational disorder and/or clustering effects lead to large dispersions in the Mn-Mn exchange interactions, in the case of fixed Mn concentration. Moreover, theoretical results for the ground-state total energies for several configurations indicate the importance of a proper consideration of disorder in treating temperature and annealing effects.
We present a dynamical model that successfully explains the observed time evolution of the magnetization in diluted magnetic semiconductor quantum wells after weak laser excitation. Based on the pseudo-fermion formalism and a second order many-particle expansion of the exact p-d exchange interaction, our approach goes beyond the usual mean-field approximation. It includes both the sub-picosecond demagnetization dynamics and the slower relaxation processes which restore the initial ferromagnetic order in a nanosecond time scale. In agreement with experimental results, our numerical simulations show that, depending on the value of the initial lattice temperature, a subsequent enhancement of the total magnetization may be observed within a time scale of few hundreds of picoseconds.