Some of the highest transition temperatures achieved for Mn-doped GaAs have been in delta-doped heterostructures with well-separated planes of Mn. But in the absence of magnetic anisotropy, the Mermin-Wagner theorem implies that a single plane of magnetic ions cannot be ferromagnetic. Using a Heisenberg model, we show that the same mechanism that produces magnetic frustration and suppresses the transition temperature in bulk Mn-doped GaAs, due to the difference between the light and heavy band masses, can stabilize ferromagnetic order for a single layer of Mn in a GaAs quantum well. This comes at the price of quantum fluctuations that suppress the ordered moment from that of a fully saturated ferromagnet. By comparing the predictions of Heisenberg and Kohn-Luttinger models, we conclude that the Heisenberg description of a Mn-doped GaAs quantum well breaks down when the Mn concentration becomes large, but works quite well in the weak-coupling limit of small Mn concentrations. This comparison allows us to estimate the size of the quantum fluctuations in the quantum well.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0604288,
title = {A single layer of Mn in a GaAs quantum well: a ferromagnet with quantum fluctuations},
author = {Roger G. Melko and Randy S. Fishman and Fernando A. Reboredo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0604288},
year = {2009}
}