Recent progress in experiment and theory of giant magnetoresistance in magnetic nanocontacts

Full text: The experiment and theory of magnetoresistance (MR) in nanosize point contacts made of ferromagnetic metals is reviewed. The story begins from the series of experiments on Ni-Ni and Co-Co nanocontacts [1,2] in which an extraordinary high MR, 200-300%, has been observed at room temperature (see also the review [3] and references therein). Two basic mechanisms of nanosize contact MR have been proposed: enhancement of impurity scattering in the domain wall [2] and scattering of electrons by the geometrically constrained domain wall [4]. The theories were able to explain the values of magnetoresistance observed in the experiments. Very shortly afterwards further experiments raised the size of the effect till few thousand percents [5,6]. There was a discussion in the literature and scientific meetings that the observed giant MR was an artefact caused by the magneto-mechanical effect, but not true electronic MR. Indeed, some geometries of experiments could be doubted. However, a constructive development has been proposed by theory and carefully designed experiments. The theory predicted even higher magnetoresistance in the regime of conductance quantization through the magnetic nanocontact [7-10]. It seems that MR in conduction quantization regime has been observed in an experiment [11,12]. The work was supported by the RFBR grant No 03-02-17656. [1] N. Garcia, M. Munoz, and Y.-W. Zhao, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 2923 (1999). [2] G. Tatara, Y.-W. Zhao, M. Munoz, and N. Garcia, Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 2030 (1999). [3] N. Garcia, M. Munoz, V.V. Osipov, et al., Journ. Magn. Magn. Mater. 240, 92-99 (2002). [4] L.R. Tagirov, B.P. Vodopyanov, K.B. Efetov, Phys. Rev. B 63, 104428 (2001). [5] H.D. Chopra, S.Z. Hua, Phys. Rev. B 66, 020403 (2002). [6] Hai Wang, H. Cheng, N. Garcia, cond-mat/0207516 (22 Jul 2002). [7] L.R. Tagirov, B.P. Vodopyanov, K.B. Efetov, Phys. Rev. B 65, 214419 (2002). [8] M.Ye. Zhuravlev, E.Y. Tsymbal, S.S. Jaswal et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 83, 3534 (2003). [9] L.R. Tagirov, K.B. Efetov, in NATO Science Series, Kluwer Academic Publishers (v. 143 ed. by B. Aktas, L.R. Tagirov and F. Mikailov, 2004), p. 393-417. [10] L.R. Tagirov, B.P. Vodopyanov, B.M. Garipov, J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 258-259, 61 (2003). [11] S.Z. Hua, H.D. Chopra, Phys. Rev. B 67, 060401 (2003). [12] M.R. Sullivan et al., Phys. Rev. B 71, 024412 (2005)