GIANT MAGNETORESISTANCE IN THE VARIABLE-RANGE HOPPING REGIME
Ioffe L., Spivak B.

Received: May 3, 2013

DOI: 10.7868/S0044451013090149

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Dedicated to the memory of Professor Anatoly Larkin} We predict the universal power-law dependence of the localization length on the magnetic field in the strongly localized regime. This effect is due to the orbital quantum interference. Physically, this dependence shows up in an anomalously large negative magnetoresistance in the hopping regime. The reason for the universality is that the problem of the electron tunneling in a random media belongs to the same universality class as the directed polymer problem even in the case of wave functions of random sign. We present numerical simulations that prove this conjecture. We discuss the existing experiments that show anomalously large magnetoresistance. We also discuss the role of localized spins in real materials and the spin polarizing effect of the magnetic field.