The influence of defects on electrical transport in magnetic multilayers

The transmission matrix approach was used to evaluate the perpendicular mag netotransport in metallic multilayers on an abinitio level. The spin-polari zed, surface Green function technique was employed within the framework of the tight-binding, linens muffin-tin orbital method. The effect of impuriti es runs included in terms of lateral supercells with random arrangements of two types of atoms. This approach treats both the ballistic and the diffus ive regimes of magnetotransport on equal footing. The method was also appli ed to face-centered-cubic-based Co/Cu/Co(001) trilayers.