Universal conductance fluctuations in epitaxial GaMnAs ferromagnets: structural and spin disorder

L. Vila, R. Giraud, L. Thevenard, A. Lemaitre, F. Pierre, J. Dufouleur, D. Mailly, B. Barbara, G. Faini

Published 2006-09-17Version 1

Mesoscopic transport measurements reveal a large effective phase coherence length in epitaxial GaMnAs ferromagnets, contrary to usual 3d-metal ferromagnets. Universal conductance fluctuations of single nanowires are compared for epilayers with a tailored anisotropy. At large magnetic fields, quantum interferences are due to structural disorder only, and an unusual behavior related to hole-induced ferromagnetism is evidenced, for both quantum interferences and decoherence. At small fields, phase coherence is shown to persist down to zero field, even in presence of magnons, and an additional spin disorder contribution to quantum interferences is observed under domain walls nucleation.