Resistivity due to Domain Wall Scattering

Abstract

Domain walls in ferromagnetic metals are known to be a source of resistance since the early experiments on iron whiskers. Recently it has been possible to identify this contribution from data on cobalt and nickel films which display stripe domains in which the current is driven normal to the domain walls. With the same Hamiltonian as used to explain giant magnetoresistance in structures with collinear magnetic alignments we have determined the spin flip, as well as nonflip, scattering present in domain walls. We calculate the resistivity in zero field, i.e., in the presence of striped domains, and at saturation to show the amount of magnetoresistance that is attributable to domain wall scattering.