Temperature and Co thickness dependent sign change of the anomalous Hall effect in Co/Pd multilayers: An experimental and theoretical study

Abstract

The anomalous Hall effect in ultra-thin {Co0.3 nm/Pd0.5 nm}n multilayers has been investigated recently with respect to surface and interface contributions [Guo et al., Phys. Rev. B 86, 104433 (2012)]. In this work, we observe a Co thickness and temperature dependent sign change also for {Co0.20–0.55 nm/Pd1.5nm or 1.8 nm}9x multilayers, e.g., in layer stacks with considerably thicker Pd layers and hence lower resistivity. The thickness dependent behavior can be reproduced by ab initio calculations of the Hall conductivity, for which only interfacial and bulk contributions play a role.