Exchange anisotropy effects on ferromagnetism in diluted, magnetic semiconductors

Abstract We investigate the interplay of exchange anisotropy and positional disorder on the magnetic properties of diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS). We find that the anisotropic spin exchange interactions arising from spin–orbit coupling do not lead to a large suppression of the ferromagnetism at low temperatures unless the anisotropy is very strong. This suggests that such effects observed in experiments are more likely to be due to antiferromagnetic exchange interactions or magnetically inert dopants.