Asymmetry in the angular dependence of the switching field of GaMnAs film

Planar Hall effect measurements were carried out on two GaMnAs ferromagnetic films with different Mn concentrations (6.2% and 8.3% Mn). The switching fields of magnetization taken from field scans of the planar Hall effect showed significantly different angular dependences in the two samples. While the angular dependence of the switching field for the sample with 8.3% Mn had a symmetric rectangular shape in the polar plot, that of the other sample with 6.2% Mn exhibited a clearly asymmetric behavior, with large steps at the < 110 > crystallographic directions. This switching field behavior was analyzed by considering pinning fields for crossing the < 110 > directions. The fitting of step features appearing at the < 110 > directions revealed the presence of a new uniaxial anisotropy field H-u2 along the [100] direction, in addition to the commonly observed cubic H-c anisotropy field (along the < 100 > directions) and uniaxial anisotropy H-u1 fields (along either the [110] or the [1 (1) over bar0] direction) in the GaMnAs film. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3537946]