Theory and Simulation of Spin Transport in Antiferromagnetic Semiconductors: Application to MnTe

K. Akabli (1, 2) , Yann Magnin (1) , Masataka Oko (2) , Isao Harada (2) , Hung The Diep (1)

1 LPTM - UMR 8089 - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modélisation
2 GSNST - Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology [Okayama]

We study in this paper the parallel spin current in an antiferromagnetic semiconductor thin film where we take into account the interaction between itinerant spins and lattice spins. The spin model is an anisotropic Heisenberg model. We use here the Boltzmann's equation with numerical data on cluster distribution obtained by Monte Carlo simulations and cluster-construction algorithms. We study the cases of degenerate and non-degenerate semiconductors. The spin resistivity in both cases is shown to depend on the temperature with a broad maximum at the transition temperature of the lattice spin system. The shape of the maximum depends on the spin anisotropy and on the magnetic field. It shows however no sharp peak in contrast to ferromagnetic materials. Our method is applied to MnTe. Comparison to experimental data is given.

Mots clés: Spin Transport; Boltzmann's Equation; Monte Carlo Simulation; Spin Resistivity; MnTe; Semiconductors

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

K. Akabli, Yann Magnin, Masataka Oko, Isao Harada, Hung The Diep. Theory and Simulation of Spin Transport in Antiferromagnetic Semiconductors: Application to MnTe. 2009. ⟨hal-00438844v4⟩