Mesoscopic aspects of the giant magnetoresistance

Microscopic information about electron scattering at heterointerfaces which is relevant for the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) in metallic multilayers can be obtained from measurements carried out in the mesoscopic regime. First-principles calculations of transport through ballistic multilayers demonstrate the importance of taking into account the complicated band structure. The statistics of transport through single disordered interfaces is shown to be non-universal, which means that the fluctuation properties can yield new information on the interface disorder scattering.