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Effect of a Domain Wall on the Conductance Quantization in a Ferromagnetic Nanowire

Katsuyuki Nakanishi, Yoshiko Oi Nakamura

cond-mat.mes-hallarXiv:cond-mat/9912447

Abstract

The effect of the domain wall (DW) on the conductance in a ballistic ferromagnetic nanowire (FMNW) is revisited by exploiting a specific perturbation theory which is effective for a thin DW; the thinness is often the case in currently interested conductance measurements on FMNWs. Including the Hund coupling between carrier spins and local spins in a DW, the conductance of a FMNW in the presence of a very thin DW is calculated within the Landauer-Büttiker formalism. It is revealed that the conductance plateaus are modified significantly, and the switching of the quantization unit from e2/h to ``about 2e2/h'' is produced in a FMNW by the introduction of a thin DW. This accounts well for recent observations in a FMNW.

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