Electronic transport in ferromagnetic ballistic conductors is predicted to exhibit ballistic anisotropic magnetoresistance (BAMR) - a change in the ballistic conductance with the direction of magnetization. This phenomenon originates from the effect of the spin-orbit interaction on the electronic band structure which leads to a change in the number of bands crossing the Fermi energy when the magnetization direction changes. We illustrate the significance of this phenomenon by performing ab-initio calculations of the ballistic conductance in ferromagnetic Ni and Fe nanowires which display a sizable BAMR when the magnetization changes direction from parallel to perpendicular to the wire axis.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0412637,
title = {Ballistic anisotropic magnetoresistance},
author = {J. Velev and R. F. Sabirianov and S. S. Jaswal and E. Y. Tsymbal},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0412637},
year = {2013}
}