Shadow Bands and Tunneling Magnetoresistance in Itinerant Electron Ferromagnets

Abstract

In itinerant electron ferromagnets spectral weight is transferred at finite temperatures from quasiparticle peaks located at majority and minority-spin band energies to shadow-band peaks. For a given Bloch wavevector and band index, the majority-spin shadow-band peak is located near the minority-spin quasiparticle energy and the minority-spin shadow-band peak is located near the majority-spin quasiparticle energy. This property can explain much of the temperature dependence seen in the magnetoresistance of magnetic tunnel junctions.