Domain wall resistance in -nanowires

¹ Experimentelle Physik, Universität Duisburg-Essen - 47057 Duisburg, Germany
² Fachbereich Physik, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
³ Theoretische Physik, Universität Duisburg-Essen - 47057 Duisburg, Germany
⁴ Department of Physics, University of York - York YO105DD, UK

Received: 14 January 2005
Accepted: 18 April 2005

Abstract

The clear separation of the domain wall magnetoresistance from the anisotropic magnetoresistance has been successfully achieved by investigating the transversal magnetoresistance of individual -nanowires. Since the magnetic easy axis of this nanowires is out of plane, the magnetization is always perpendicular to the current direction when applying a magnetic field transversally. Most importantly, even the domain walls do not give rise to an anisotropic resistance contribution by themselves under these conditions, and thus the pure domain wall magnetoresistance can be measured. The interpretation of the resistance behavior is confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations giving the magnetization distribution during the magnetization reversal process. It can be shown that the observed resistance behavior reflects the dependence of the domain wall magnetoresistance on the domain wall structure.