Taddei, F. and Sanvito, S. and Jefferson, J. H. and Lambert, C. J. (1999) Suppression of giant magnetoresistance by a superconducting contact. Physical review letters, 82 (24). pp. 4938-4941. ISSN 0031-9007
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
We predict that current perpendicular to the plane giant magnetoresistance (GMR) in a phase-coherent magnetic multilayer is suppressed when one of the contacts is superconducting. This is a consequence of a superconductivity-induced magnetoresistive effect, whereby the conductance of the ferromagnetically aligned state is drastically reduced by superconductivity. To demonstrate this effect, we compute the GMR ratio of clean (Cu/Co)(n)Cu and (Cu/Co)(n)Pb multilayers, described by an ab initio spd tight-binding Hamiltonian. By analyzing a simpler model with two orbitals per site, we also show that the suppression survives in the presence of elastic scattering by impurities.