Fy. Rao et Aj. Freeman, GMR IN MAGNETIC MULTILAYERS FROM A FIRST PRINCIPLES BAND-STRUCTURE KUBO-GREENWOOD APPROACH, IEEE transactions on magnetics, 34(4), 1998, pp. 930-932
We employ the Kubo-Greenwood formula to investigate from first-princip
les the giant magnetoresistance in FemMn (M=V, Cr, Mn and Cu) superlat
tices. The results indicate that MR can arise from band structure chan
ges from ferromagnetic to anti-ferromagnetic alignments. Quantum confi
nement in the perpendicular direction is induced by the potential step
s between the Fe and spacer layers and causes a much larger MR in the
current-perpendicular-to-the-plane (CPP) geometry than in the current-
inplane (CIP) geometry. In the presence of the spinorbit coupling inte
raction, MR is found to be reduced by spin-channel mixing.