Conductance of mesoscopic systems with magnetic impurities

We investigate the combined effects of magnetic impurities and applied magnetic field on the interference contribution to the conductance of disordered metals. We show that in a metal with weak spin-orbit interaction, the polarization of impurity spins reduces the rate of electron phase relaxation, thus enhancing the weaklocalization correction to conductivity. Magnetic field also suppresses thermal fluctuations of magnetic impurities, leading to a recovery of the conductance fluctuations. This recovery occurs regardless of the strength of the spin-orbit interaction. We calculate the magnitudes of the weak-localization correction and of the mesoscopic conductance fluctuations at an arbitrary level of the spin polarization induced by a magnetic field. Our analytical results for the ‘‘h/e’’ Aharonov-Bohm conductance oscillations in metal rings can be used to extract the spin and gyromagnetic factor of magnetic impurities from existing experimental data.