Mesoscopic tunneling magnetoresistance - art. no. 184418

We study spin-dependent transport through ferromagnet/normal-metal/ferromag net double tunnel junctions in the mesoscopic Coulomb-blockade regime. We c alculate the conductance in the absence or presence of spin-orbit interacti on and for arbitrary orientation of the lead magnetizations. The tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR), defined at the Coulomb-blockade conductance peaks, is calculated and its probability distribution presented. We show that mes oscopic fluctuations can lead to the optimal value of the TMR and that the conductance in noncollinear configurations gives information about how the spin rotates inside the grain.