The electrical resistance of spatially varied magnetic interface. The role of normal scattering

TL;DR

This paper studies how magnetic inhomogeneity affects electrical resistance at interfaces, revealing dependence on spatial variation, scattering processes, and magnetic states, with implications for spintronics experiments.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of interface resistance dependence on magnetic inhomogeneity, including smooth and sharp variations, and the impact of spin polarization and scattering processes.

Findings

Resistance depends on the spatial variation of magnetic properties.

Smooth variations relate resistance to spin flip time.

Sharp variations relate resistance to differences in magnetic properties.

Abstract

We investigate the diffusive electron transport in conductors with spatially inhomogeneous magnetic properties taking into account both impurity and normal scattering. It is found that the additional interface resistance that arises due to the magnetic inhomogeneity depends essentially on their spatial characteristics. The resistance is proportional to the spin flip time in the case when the magnetic properties of the conducting system vary smoothly enough along the sample. It can be used to direct experimental investigation of spin flip processes. In the opposite case, when magnetic characteristics are varied sharply, the additional resistance depends essentially on the difference of magnetic properties of the sides far from the interface region. The resistance increases as the frequency of the electron-electron scattering increases. We consider also two types of smooth interfaces: (i) between fully spin-polarized magnetics and usual magnetic (or non-magnetic) conductors, and (ii) between two fully oppositely polarized magnetic conductors. It is shown that the interface resistance is very sensitive to appearing of the fully spin-polarized state under the applied external field.