Dephasing in ferromagnetic nanowires: The role of spin waves

Abstract

We present a calculation of the dephasing time of electrons in a ferromagnet relevant for the conductance fluctuations. We focus on the contribution from the interaction with spin waves. Explicit results are presented for a quasi-one-dimensional systems. Going beyond previous calculations, we do not restrict ourselves to the limit of a small exchange splitting compared to the electronic elastic scattering time, nor does our calculation rely on the diffusion approximation to describe electronic transport.