Origin of bulk uniaxial anisotropy in zinc-blende dilute magnetic semiconductors

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Jun 8;108(23):237203. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.237203. Epub 2012 Jun 7.

Abstract

It is demonstrated that the nearest-neighbor Mn pair on the GaAs (001) surface has a lower energy for the [110] direction compared to the [110] case. According to the group theory and Luttinger's method of invariants, this specific Mn distribution results in bulk uniaxial in-plane and out-of-plane anisotropies. The sign and magnitude of the corresponding anisotropy energies determined by a perturbation method and ab initio computations are consistent with experimental results.