Skew scattering by rare-earth impurities in silver, gold, and aluminum

Abstract

We report Hall-effect measurements on silver, gold, and aluminum containing rare-earth impurities, between 1.2 and 77 K and up to 40 kG. The Hall effect due to skew scattering by the magnetic rare-earth impurities is clearly observed; for 0.5 at.% of impurities and at 1.2 K, it can be twice as large as the ordinary Hall effect. We present a model which can explain the variation of the skew scattering throughout the rare-earth series and, from the analysis of the experimental results, we derive the coupling between the rare earth and the orbital angular momentum of a conduction electron.