Effects of correlated disorder on the magnetism of double exchange systems

Abstract

We study the effects of short-range correlated disorder arising from chemical dopants or local lattice distortions, on the ferromagnetism of 3d double exchange systems. For this, we integrate out the carriers and treat the resulting disordered spin Hamiltonian within local random phase approximation, whose reliability is shown by direct comparison with Monte Carlo simulations. We find large scale inhomogeneities in the charge, couplings and spin densities. Compared with the homogeneous case, we obtain larger Curie temperatures ($T_{C}$) and very small spin stiffnesses ($D$). As a result, large variations of $\frac{D}{T_{C}}$ measured in manganites may be explained by correlated disorder. This work also provides a microscopic model for Griffiths phases in double exchange systems.