Evidence for Two Current Conduction in Iron.pdf

Evidence for Two Current Conduction in Iron I. A. Campbell,1 A. Fert,1 and A. R. Pomeroy2 1Physique des Solides, Faculte? des Sciences, 91 Orsay, France 2Department of Physics, University of Essex Measurements of resistivities of dilute iron based alloys show strong deviations from Matthiessen’s rule. These deviations can be explained by a model in which spin ↑ and spin ↓ electrons conduct in parallel. The results are consistent with the theory of impurity shielding in these alloys. [This paper provided the first experimental demonstration of two current conduction at low temperatures in a ferromagnetic metal. One direct consequence of this property is the Giant Magnetoresistance discovered in 1988 by the groups of Albert Fert and of Peter Gru?nberg]. Published in the PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE, Vol. 15, p. 977, May 1967 PACS numbers: A number of authors (Mott1,2, see also Weiss and Marotta3) have suggested that some anomalies in the resistivities of ferromagnetic metals could be explained by a model in which the spin-up and spin-down electrons carry current in parallel. Measurements which we have made on the resistivities of iron based alloys containing dilute impurities provide evidence that this is indeed the case. There are some interesting consequences if this interpretation is correct. In order to have a standard of comparison, we compare the resistivities throughout with those which would be expected if Matthiessen’s rule was obeyed. This rule (Matthiessen4) follows from the assumption that there is one type of current carrier and that the scattering processes which cause resistance are independent; thus for an alloy at temperature T the resistivity predicted by the rule is: ρm(T ) = ρ(0) + ρh(T ) (1) where ρ(0) is the residual resistivity of the alloy, and ρh(T ) is the resistivity of the pure host-metal at temperature T . (This temperature dependent term includes all the different scattering terms for the host-metal.) For a metal containing two impurities, A an