We study the electron transport in a magnetically doped three-dimensional topological insulator (TI) by taking the effects of impurity-impurity exchange interactions into account. The interactions between magnetic impurities give rise to the formation of magnetic clusters with temperature-dependent mean sizes, randomly distributed on the surface of the TI. Instead of dealing with single magnetic impurities, we consider surface Dirac electrons to be scattered off magnetic clusters, and define the scattering potential in terms of clusters mean sizes. Within the semiclassical Boltzmann approach, employing a generalized relaxation-time approximation, we obtain the surface conductivity of the TI by solving four sets of recursive relations and demonstrate that the system is highly anisotropic and the surface conductivities possess nonmonotonic behaviors, i.e., they strongly depends on the direction, the mean size, and the number of magnetic clusters. We demonstrate that the dependence of the anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) to the spin direction of the magnetic clusters is inconsistent with the angular dependence of the TI doped with noninteracting magnetic impurities. Our results are consistent with the recent experiment on the AMR of the Cr-doped ${(\mathrm{Bi},\mathrm{Sb})}_2{\mathrm{Te}}_3$ TI.

• Received 14 June 2018
• Revised 26 August 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.98.155413