Electrical conductivity of magnetic multilayered structures

Abstract

The electrical-transport properties of magnetic multilayered structures are dominated by three ingredients: (1) the scattering within layers that changes from one layer to another, (2) the additional scattering resistivity due to the roughness of the interfaces between layers, and (3) the resistivity that depends on the orientation of the magnetization of the magnetic layers. In the quasiclassical approach the boundary scattering is treated differently from other sources. Here we present a unified treatment of all sources of resistivity, and determine the origin of the giant magnetoresistance observed in Fe/Cr superlattices.