Interatomic exchange in Mn-doped III-V semiconductors

Density-functional calculations are used to determine the electronic structure and magnetic properties of dilute magnetic semiconductors with the composition X_1−xMn_xN (X=Al, Ga, In, x=6.25% and 12.5%). Emphasis is on the interatomic exchange as a function of the Mn-Mn distance. Our superlattice calculations show that the Mn dopants are spin-polarized with a half-metallic band gap and a magnetic moment of 4 μ_B per Mn atom at x=6.25 and 12.5%. The Mn (3d) bands lie in the band gap but partially hybridize with valence band or N 2p electrons, depending on the group-III element and on the spin direction. To calculate the exchange interaction parameters J_ij, we have used a Green-function approach. The interaction between Mn atoms extends over several interatomic interactions and is mediated by nitrogen (2p) electrons. The exchange is always ferromagnetic and largest for the first nearest neighbors, but substantial ferromagnetic interactions persist over Mn-Mn distances up to sixth nearest neighbors in the considered supercell.     

Effect of Al doping on the magnetic and electrical properties of layered perovskite La1.3Sr1.7Mn2−xAlxO7

The effect of Al substitution for Mn site in layered manganese oxides La_1.3Sr_1.7Mn_2−xAl_xO₇ on the magnetic and electrical properties has been investigated. It is interesting that all the samples undergo a similar and complex transition with lowing temperature; they transform from the two-dimensional short-range ferromagnetic order at T*, then enter the three-dimensional long-range ferromagnetic state at T_C, at last they display the canted antiferromagnetic state below T_N. T*, T_C and T_N are all reduced with Al content. Resistivity increases sharply with increasing Al concentration, and the metal-insulator transition disappears when x reaches 10%. Additionally, magnetoresistance (MR) effect is weakened. Al substitution dilutes the magnetic active Mn-O-Mn network and weakens the double exchange interaction, and further suppresses FM ordering and metallic conduction. Owing to the anisotropic interaction in the layered perovskite, the magnetic and electrical properties are more sensitive to Al doping level than those in ABO₃-type perovskite.     

Site-diluted quantum Heisenberg spin model applied to the magnetic properties of Fe–Al disordered alloys

In this work we present a theoretical study of the magnetic behavior of disordered Fe–Al alloys on the basis of a simple-diluted quantum Heisenberg spin model with the assumption that the exchange interaction J depends on the Al concentration q. We calculated the critical temperature and exponents through the mean field renormalization group method. An acceptable fit to the experimental phase diagram for Al concentration in the range 0.30q0.45 is obtained.     

Electronic structure and magnetic properties of RCo5−xMx (R=Y,Pr and M=Al,Si) system

Detailed theoretical and experimental investigations of the electronic and magnetic properties of the RCo_5?xM_x compounds (R=Y, Pr and M=Si, Al) have been performed. All theoretical investigations of the electronic and magnetic properties of the system have been done using the Korringa–Kohn–Rostoker (KKR) band structure method. The Si for Co substitution in RCo₅ does not change the magnetic ordering: the RCo_5?xSi_x with R=Y, Nd and Pr is ferromagnetic, whilst the heavy rare-earth containing compounds are ferrimagnetic. The important modifications induced by this substitution concerns the magnetic properties of the system: the Curie temperature and the magnetic moments of Co decrease with Si content, indicating the weakening of the Co–Co exchange interaction. The band structure calculations evidence the hybridization between the 3d electronic states of Co and the 3p states of Si as possible reason for the diminishing of Co–Co exchange interaction. Also, the volume effect on the magnetic properties of the YCo₄Si was investigated using theoretical methods. The results are compared with the experimental measurements in order to distinguish the origin of magnetization reduction in YCo₄Si compared with YCo₄Al.     

HgMnTe磁性二维电子气自旋-轨道和交换相互作用研究

通过分析不同温度下HgMnTe磁性二维电子气Shubnikov-de Hass（SdH）振荡的拍频现象，研究了量子阱中电子自旋 轨道相互作用和spd交换相互作用.结果表明：（1）在零磁场下，电子的自旋 轨道相互作用导致电子发生零场自旋分裂；（2）在弱磁场下，电子的自旋-轨道相互作用占主导地位，并受Landau分裂和Zeeman分裂的影响，电子的自旋分裂随磁场增加而减小；（3）在高磁场下，电子的spd交换相互作用达到饱和，电子的自旋分裂主要表现为Zeeman分裂.实验证明了当电子的Zeeman分裂能量与零场 关键词： 磁性二维电子气 Zeeman分裂 Rashba自旋分裂     

Tunneling spectroscopy of the electron exchange-correlation interaction in a Schottky barrier in a quantizing magnetic field: n-GaAs/Me junctions

The magnetic-field-induced variation in the width of an anomalous resistance peak in the region of a zero-bias anomaly in n-GaAS/Me tunnel junctions was studied in the range of magnetic field strengths of up to 23 T at the temperatures T=4.2 and 1.5 K. The experimental curves depend neither on the method of a semiconductor substrate surface preparation (doped single crystal cut or epitaxially grown doped semiconductor film) nor on the type of dopant (Te, Si) and metal (Me=Au, Al). A comparison to a theoretical dependence of the exchange potential on the magnetic field strength for electrons on the lowest Landau level confirms that the anomalous resistance peak width can serve as a measure of the exchange-correlation potential jump on the surface of the degenerate electron gas. The results provide an explanation for the dependence of the zero-bias anomaly on the magnetic field and offer a possibility for directly measuring the electron exchange-correlation interaction in a Schottky barrier by means of tunneling spectroscopy.     

Electronic structure and magnetic properties of Cr monodoped and (Cr, Al) codoped ZnO

Using first-principles calculations based on density functional theory, we investigated systematically the electronic structures and magnetic properties of Cr monodoped and (Cr, Al) codoped in ZnO. The results indicate that Cr monodoped in ZnO favors a spin-polarized state with a total magnetic moment of 7.50μ_B per supercell and the magnetic moment mainly comes from the unpaired 3d electrons of Cr atoms. In addition, it was found that the ferromagnetic exchange interaction between Cr atoms is short-ranged in Cr monodoped ZnO. Interestingly, the ferromagnetic stability can be enhanced significantly by codoping Al_Zn. We think that the enhancement of ferromagnetic stability should be attributed to the additional electrons introduced by Al_Zn codoping.     

Spin and temperature dependence of the magnetic hyperfine field of Cd in the rare earth-aluminum Lavesphase compounds RAl2

Perturbed angular correlation spectroscopy has been used to investigate the combined magnetic and electric hyperfine interaction of the probe nucleus ¹¹¹Cd in ferromagnetically ordered rare earth (R)-dialuminides RAl₂ as a function of temperature for the rare earth constituents R=Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Tb, Dy, Ho and Er. In compounds with two magnetically non-equivalent Al sites (R=Sm, Tb, Ho, Er), the magnetic hyperfine field was found to be strongly anisotropic. This anisotropy is much greater than the anisotropic dipolar fields, suggesting a contribution of the anisotropic 4f-electron density to magnetic hyperfine field at the closed-shell probe nucleus. The spin dependence of the magnetic hyperfine field reflects a decrease of the effective exchange parameter of the indirect coupling with increasing R atomic number. For the compounds with the R constituents R=Pr, Nd, Tb, Dy and Ho the parameters B₄, B₆ of the interaction of the crystal field interaction have been determined from the temperature dependence of the magnetic hyperfine field. The ¹¹¹Cd PAC spectrum of EuAl₂ at 9 K confirms the antiferromagnetic structure of this compound.     

Probing the spin state of a single magnetic ion in an individual quantum dot

The magnetic state of a single magnetic ion (Mn2+) embedded in an individual quantum dot is optically probed using microspectroscopy. The fine structure of a confined exciton in the exchange field of a single Mn2+ ion (S=5/2) is analyzed in detail. The exciton-Mn2+ exchange interaction shifts the energy of the exciton depending on the Mn2+ spin component and six emission lines are observed at zero magnetic field. Magneto-optic measurements reveal that the emission intensities in both circular polarizations are controlled by the Mn2+ spin distribution imposed by the exchange interaction with the exciton, the magnetic field, and an effective manganese temperature which depends on both the lattice temperature and the density of photocreated carriers. Under magnetic field, the electron-Mn interaction induces a mixing of the bright and dark exciton states.     

Enhanced exchange bias in magnetron-sputtered Ni–Mn–Sb–Al ferromagnetic shape memory alloy thin films

In the present study, the influence of aluminium (Al) addition on the martensite-austenite phase transformation and exchange bias of Ni–Mn–Sb films have been investigated. Ni–Mn–Sb–Al films with different Al concentration (∼0–5.6%) were deposited by co-sputtering of Ni–Mn–Sb and Al targets. Experimental results revealed the decrease in martensitic transformation temperature with increasing Al content upto a certain extent (3.3%) beyond which martensitic transformation was suppressed. Paramagnetic to ferromagnetic transition temperature (T_C) also decreased with increasing Al concentration. Ni₅₀Mn_36.3Sb_10.4Al_3.3 thin film showed significant improvement in exchange bias field as compared to pure Ni_50.3Mn_36.9Sb_12.8 thin film. This enhancement in the exchange bias field H_EB = 611 Oe at 10 K is attributed to the increase of AFM-FM interactions that result from the decrease of Mn–Mn distance due to the incorporation of Al atoms. This behaviour is an additional property of the FSMA thin films apart from various other multifunctional properties and therefore, is of technological importance for their applications in magnetic storage devices.     

Ferromagnetism in magnetically doped III-V semiconductors.

The origin of ferromagnetism in semimagnetic III-V materials is discussed. The indirect exchange interaction caused by virtual electron excitations from magnetic impurity acceptor levels to the valence band can explain ferromagnetism in GaAs(Mn) in both degenerate and nondegenerate samples. Formation of ferromagnetic clusters and the percolation picture of phase transition describes well all available experimental data and allows us to predict the Mn-composition dependence of transition temperature in wurtzite (Ga,In,Al)N epitaxial layers.     

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and magnetism of Mn1−x Al x alloys

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), magnetization and magnetic susceptibility of Mn_1−x Al _x (x = 0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7) alloys are reported. X-ray diffraction measurements showed that all investigated samples have the same crystallographic structure as the parent compound (AuCu₃-structure type). The alloys are disordered for x ≤ 0.5, but become almost crystallographically ordered for higher Al concentration. This change in the crystallographic order is reflected both in the magnetization and Curie temperature values. The exchange interaction is ferromagnetic between the pairs of the near-neighbour Mn-Ni and Ni-Ni magnetic moments and antiferromagnetic for Mn-Mn pairs. The last one is present only in the disordered alloys, which leads to smaller values of the magnetization of these alloys in comparison with the ordered ones. The Mn magnetic moment has the fully ordered value of 3.2 μB in all investigated alloys. The decrease of the Ni magnetic moment as the Al concentration increases may be explained by the hybridization of the Ni 3d and Al 3sp states, which leads to a partial filling of the Ni 3d band. The magnetic susceptibility measurements pointed out the existence of spin fluctuations on Ni sites.      

中心对称的阻挫磁体中斯格明子直径的调节

在带有垂直各向异性的二维三角晶格磁体中,当同时存在最近邻铁磁性和第三近邻反铁磁性交换作用时,垂直于膜面施加外磁场会使体系内自旋沿着非共面的方向排列,甚至出现拓扑稳定的斯格明子自旋结构.基于蒙特卡罗模拟方法,本文研究了在该二维阻挫磁体中,竞争性交换作用和外磁场对斯格明子直径的影响.与常规非中心对称的手性磁体中的斯格明子性质类似,外磁场会磁化斯格明子外围自旋而减小斯格明子直径.但是,磁体中反铁磁性交换作用的增强会整体压缩斯格明子.本文结合自旋波理论和蒙特卡罗模拟,首次量化了此类阻挫磁体中斯格明子的直径.结果表明:在弱的反铁磁性交换作用磁体中,斯格明子直径随磁场增大而快速线性减小;随着反铁磁性交换作用的增大,斯格明子直径随外磁场增大的减小变得相对平缓,但在强磁场下也会造成斯格明子直径的加速减小;随着反铁磁性交换作用的增强,斯格明子在不同外磁场下的直径的最大值和中值均从逐渐减小到渐趋稳定,而直径的最小值则从快速减小到表现出很大的涨落.这些现象都可以通过分析斯格明子在不同交换作用和外磁场下的构型和磁能变化加以解释.该项工作阐明了在中心对称的阻挫磁体中斯格明子直径的可调节性,不仅完善了我们对斯格明子本身物理机理的认识,同时也为发展基于斯格明子的新一代存储和逻辑器件提供了理论支撑.     

Simulation of the nonlinear dynamics of magnetic inhomogeneities in real magnets

The dynamics of domain walls (DW) in an infinite ferromagnet containing a flat layer with parameters of magnetic anisotropy and exchange interaction differing from the bulk values was investigated. The dependences of the minimum velocity of DW transmission through the defect region and the translational and pulsation modes of DW fluctuations on the parameters describing the inhomogeneity of magnetic anisotropy and exchange interaction were found.     

Yb Mössbauer and neutron diffraction investigation of the antiferromagnetic phase in the Kondo lattices YbP and YbN

The Kondo lattices YbP and YbN (nonstoichiometric samples) have been investigated by ¹⁷⁰Yb Mössbauer spectroscopy, in the temperature range 0.085 K to 80 K in zero magnetic field in YbN and with an applied magnetic field at T=0.045 K in YbP and YbN, and by neutron diffraction in YbN. In both compounds, the antiferromagnetic transition at T_N0.7 K is first order and occurs through a progressive growth of paramagnetic domains as the temperature increases. The measured exchange interaction is much larger than k_BT_N in both compounds and it is found to be isotropic in YbP and anisotropic in YbN. The saturated magnetic moment in both compounds is reduced by 50% with respect to the value calculated from the crystal field and exchange interactions. These properties are interpreted in terms of the competition between the Kondo effect and the RKKY exchange interaction; using a model mean field NCA calculation to describe the magnetic phase, the Kondo temperatures T_K are found to be near 5–10 K.     

Staggered potential and spin polarization effects on RKKY interaction in armchair graphene nanoribbon

Indirect exchange interaction between two magnetic external atoms, named by Ruderman–Kittle–Kasuya–Yosida (RKKY) interaction, has been presented in the staggered armchair graphene nanoribbon. We have studied RKKY interaction as a function of distance between localized moments. It has been shown that a magnetic ordering along the z-axis mediates an anisotropic interaction which corresponds to a XXZ model interaction between two magnetic moments. The static spin susceptibility components of armchair graphene nanoribbon have been calculated to find exchange interaction between arbitrary components of magnetic moments. We have exploited Green’s function approach in order to calculate spin susceptibility components of electronic gas in nanoribbon structure in the context of tight binding model Hamiltonian. The effects of parameter and ribbon width on the dependence of exchange interaction on distance between moments are investigated. Our results show the spin polarization along perpendicular to the plane leads to anisotropic behavior for exchange interaction between the two magnetic moments. In other words the spatial behavior of RKKY interaction between longitudinal components of magnetic moments is different from that of transverse components.     

Analyses of crystal field and exchange interaction of Dy3Ga5O12 under extreme conditions

This paper theoretically investigates the effects of crystal field and exchange interaction field on magnetic properties in dysprosium gallium garnet under extreme conditions (low temperatures and high magnetic fields) based on quantum theory. Here, five sets of crystal field parameters are discussed and compared. It demonstrates that, only considering the crystal field effect, the experiments can not be successfully explained. Thus, referring to the molecular field theory, an effective exchange field associated with the Dy--Dy exchange interaction is further taken into account. Under special consideration of crystal field and the exchange interaction field, it obtains an excellent agreement between the theoretical results and experiments, and further confirms that the exchange interaction field between rare-earth ions has great importance to magnetic properties in paramagnetic rare-earth gallium garnets.     

High-temperature ferromagnetism in laser-deposited layers of silicon and germanium doped with manganese or iron impurities

The paper reports on the results of a study of the synthesis conditions effects on magnetic and transport properties of nanosized layers of high-T_c diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS), such as Ge:Mn, Si:Mn and Si:Fe, fabricated by laser-plasma deposition over a wide range of the growth temperature, T_g=(20-550) °C on single-crystal GaAs or Al₂O₃ substrates. Ferromagnetism of the layers was detected by measurement data of the magneto-optical Kerr effect, anomalous Hall effect, negative magnetoresistance and ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) at 5-500 K. The optimum growth temperature, T_g, for Si:Mn/GaAs layers with T_c≈400 K is shown to be about 400 °C. The Si:Mn/Al₂O₃ layers with 35% of Mn have the metal-type of conductivity with manifestation of magnetization up to room temperature. Different types of uniformly doped structures and digital alloys have been investigated. In contrast to GaSb:Mn films, Si-based ferromagnetic layers have strongly different magnetic and electric properties in case of uniformly doped structures and digital alloys. Positive results of the Fermi level variation effect on the improvement of Si- and Ge-based DMS layers have been gained on the use of additional doping with shallow acceptor Al impurity which contributes to the increase of the hole concentration and the RKKY exchange interaction of 3d-ions. The Ge:(Mn, Al)/GaAs or Ge (Mn, Al)/Si layers grown at 20 °C feature surprising extraordinary angular dependence of FMR.     

Search for magnetic interaction in In doped AlN using perturbed angular correlation spectroscopy

The possible presence of a large magnetic field due to spin polarization of a Cd nucleus (decay product of ¹¹¹In) at an Al substitutional site in AlN is investigated with perturbed angular correlation (PAC) spectroscopy. The PAC spectra of ¹¹¹In/¹¹¹Cd in AlN show two probe environments: a weak quadrupole interaction (quadrupole interaction constant, $\nu _{\rm Q}^{\,\,\,\rm lattice} = 30$  MHz) due to ¹¹¹In probes at a defect free Al substitutional site and an unknown large interaction ( $\nu _{\rm Q}^{\,\,\,\rm complex} = 300$  MHz) tentatively attributed to a nearest neighbour pair between ¹¹¹In and a nitrogen vacancy (V_N) aligned along the c-axis. Surprisingly, in density functional theory (DFT) calculations, such a large electric field gradient (EFG) could not be reproduced. However, an inclusion of spin polarization in the calculations indicates a strong magnetic field at ~50 % of the ¹¹¹In/¹¹¹Cd site. An attempt to verify the presence of the strong magnetic field and to explain the origin of the strong interaction is made. Orientation measurements show, the large interaction is not characterised by a magnetic interaction and is predominantly due to the EFG. However, in the presence of an external magnetic field, the strong interaction probe environment becomes more uniform and the EFG increases by ~10 %. This definitely hints towards some sort of magnetic interaction at the strong interaction probe site.     

Aharonov-Bohm effect as a probe of interaction between magnetic impurities

We study the effects of the RKKY interaction between magnetic impurities on the mesoscopic conductance fluctuations of a metal ring with dilute magnetic impurities. At sufficiently low temperatures and strong magnetic fields, the loss of electron coherence occurs mainly due to the scattering off rare pairs of strongly coupled magnetic impurities. We establish a relation between the dephasing rate and the distribution function of the exchange interaction within such pairs. In the case of the RKKY exchange interaction, this rate exhibits 1/B(2) behavior in strong magnetic fields. We demonstrate that the Aharonov-Bohm conductance oscillations may be used as a probe of the distribution function of the exchange interaction between magnetic impurities in metals.