Interplay of disorder and geometrical frustration in Gadolinium Gallium Garnet

We study the effects of disorder on the geometrically frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnet Gadolinium Gallium Garnet (GGG) using neodymium doping (0.1 to 1\%) in combination with linear and nonlinear ac magnetic susceptibility. The Nd doping actually alleviates the effects of disorder due to excess Gd ions occupying Ga sites. The linear, frequency-dependent susceptibility reveals that 1\% Nd doping suppresses the appearance of any long-range order from approximately 80mK to below 30mK. The dynamics of isolated, correlated spin clusters were studied as a function of doping level using nonlinear susceptometry. In this regime, both the aggregate moment of the clustered spins and the activation field required to excite a nonlinear response were inversely correlated with the dopant density.