Universal Conductance Fluctuations in Epitaxial GaMnAs Ferromagnets: Dephasing by Structural and Spin Disorder

Abstract

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 magnetic 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.