Abstract
Unconventional antiferromagnets exhibit spin-dependent ohmic and tunneling transport effects that are crucial for information readout in spintronics devices and that, so far, were reserved exclusively to ferromagnets.
Highlights
In the nonrelativistic band structure of ferromagnets, the exchange interaction induces an energy gap between spinup and spin-down states, making one spin state more populated and the other one less
We elaborate on the proposal by presenting archetype model mechanisms for the giant and tunneling magnetoresistance effects in multilayers composed of these unconventional collinear antiferromagnets
This results in different Ohmic resistivities of the majority and minority spin channels and in spin-dependent density of states. The former is the basis of the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect in a trilayer stack comprising two ferromagnetic metal electrodes separated by a nonmagnetic metal spacer [1]
Summary
In the nonrelativistic band structure of ferromagnets, the exchange interaction induces an energy gap between spinup and spin-down states, making one spin state more populated and the other one less This results in different Ohmic resistivities of the majority and minority spin channels and in spin-dependent density of states. A characteristic example are antiferromagnets with a symmetry combining time reversal with space inversion, which results in Kramers spin degeneracy of electronic bands over the entire Brillouin zone [10] Considering such a model antiferromagnet, a STT mechanism was theoretically proposed more than a decade ago which differs fundamentally from STT in ferromagnets [6].
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