Spin-controlled negative magnetoresistance resulting from exchange interactions
N. V. Agrinskaya, V. I. Kozub, N. Yu. Mikhailin, D. V. Shamshur
A.F. Ioffe Institute, 194021 Saint Petersburg, Russia
Abstract
We studied conductivity of
AlGaAs-GaAs quantum well structures (where centers
of the wells were doped by Be)
at temperatures higher than 4 K in magnetic
fields up 10 T. Throughout all the temperature region considered the
conductivity demonstrated activated behavior. At moderate magnetic fields
0.1 T<H<1 T we observed negative isotropic
magnetoresistance which was
linear in magnetic field while for
magnetic field normal with respect to the
plane of the wells the magnetoresistance was positive
at H>2 T. To the
best of our knowledge, it was the first observation of linear negative
magnetoresistance which would be isotropic
with respect to the direction of
magnetic field. While the isotropic character
of magnetoresistance apparently
evidences role of spins, the existing
theoretical considerations concerning
spin effects in conductance fail to explain our experimental results. We
believe that such a behavior can be attributed to spin effects supported
by exchange interactions between localized states.