Interfacial scattering effect on anomalous Hall effect in Ni/Au multilayers

The effect of interfacial scattering on anomalous Hall effect (AHE) was studied in the ${{\left(\text{N}{{\text{i}}_{\frac{36}{n}~\text{nm}}}/\text{A}{{\text{u}}_{\frac{12}{n}~\text{nm}}}\right)}_{n}}$ multilayers. Field-dependent Hall resistivity was measured in the temperature range of 5K with the magnetic field up to 50 kOe. The anomalous Hall resistivity (${{\rho}_{\text{AHE}}}$ ) was enhanced by more than six times at 5 K from n €‰ €‰= €‰ €‰1 to n €‰ €‰= €‰ €‰12 due to the increased interfacial scattering, whereas the longitudinal resistivity (${{\rho}_{xx}}$ ) was increased nearly three times. A scaling relation ${{\rho}_{\text{AHE}}}\sim \rho _{xx}^{\gamma}$ with $\gamma =1.85$ was obtained for ${{\rho}_{\text{AHE}}}$ and ${{\rho}_{xx}}$ measured at 5 €‰K, indicating that the dominant mechanism(s) of the AHE in these multilayers should be side-jump or/and intrinsic in nature. The new scaling relation ${{\rho}_{\text{AHE}}}=\alpha {{\rho}_{xx0}}+\beta \rho _{xx0}^{2}+b\rho _{xx}^{2}$ (Tian et al 2009 Phys. Rev. Lett. 103 087206) has been applied to our data to identify the origin of the AHE in this type of multilayer.