Abstract
We demonstrate that the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect in magnetic multilayers can be explained quantitatively in terms of the scattering of electrons from a spin-independent random potential that arises from the grown-in defects within the multilayer. We have calculated the GMR ratio for Co4/Cu4 and Fe4/Cr4 (001) multilayered systems within the Kubo–Greenwood formalism assuming that the on-site atomic energies are disordered randomly within a realistic spd tight-binding model. Our predictions are in good agreement with experiment and demonstrate that (i) increasing disorder causes a drop of GMR in multilayers, (ii) GMR for the current perpendicular to the plane is typically by a factor of two higher than GMR for the current in the plane, and (iii) the semiclassical treatment of conductivity applied to magnetic multilayers results in overestimated values of GMR due to the neglect of interband transitions.
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