Uniaxial Strain Controlling Magnetic Anisotropy in (Ga,Mn)As

A theoretical study of magnetocrystalline anisotropy controlled by in-plane lattice symmetry distortions is presented. The uniaxial strain, only presumed by earlier studies in order to model the observed uniaxial magnetic anisotropy, has recently become an experimentally accessible parameter. We show that the lithographically induced strain can compete with intrinsic symmetry breaking, easy axes can take general in-plane directions, and anisotropy fields scale linearly with strain for typical experimental strain magnitudes. Our results are in qualitative agreement with experimental results.