Clustering in disordered ferromagnets: The Curie temperature in diluted magnetic semiconductors

Abstract

We theoretically investigate impurity correlation and magnetic clustering effects on the long-range ferromagnetic ordering in diluted magnetic semiconductors, such as $\textrm{Ga}_{1-x}\textrm{Mn}_{x}\textrm{As}$, using analytical arguments and direct Monte Carlo simulations. We obtain an analytic formula for the ferromagnetic transition temperature $T_{c}$ which becomes asymptotically exact in the strongly disordered, highly dilute (i.e. small $x$) regime. We establish that impurity correlations have only small effects on $T_{c}$ with the neutrally correlated random disorder producing the nominally highest $T_{c}$. We find that the ferromagnetic order is approached from the high temperature paramagnetic side through a random magnetic clustering phenomenon consistent with the percolation transition scenario.