Rights statement: © 2006 The American Physical Society
Final published version, 746 KB, PDF document
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Article number | 206602 |
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<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 17/11/2006 |
<mark>Journal</mark> | Physical review letters |
Issue number | 20 |
Volume | 97 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Publication Status | Published |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
We exploit the ability to precisely control the magnetic domain structure of perpendicularly magnetized Pt/Co/Pt trilayers to fabricate artificial domain wall arrays and study their transport properties. The scaling behavior of this model system confirms the intrinsic domain wall origin of the magnetoresistance, and systematic studies using domains patterned at various angles to the current flow are excellently described by an angular-dependent resistivity tensor containing perpendicular and parallel domain wall resistivities. We find that the latter are fully consistent with Levy-Zhang theory, which allows us to estimate the ratio of minority to majority spin carrier resistivities, rho(down arrow)/rho(up arrow)similar to 5.5, in good agreement with thin film band structure calculations.