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# Seeing Galaxies Through Thick & Thin. III. HST Imaging of the Dust in Backlit Spiral GalaxiesBased on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.

## 1 Introduction

The importance of dust extinction within galaxies is a fundamental problem for a wide range of issues. It affects the extragalactic distance scale through inclination corrections to the Tully-Fisher relation. Dust extinction affects the inferred evolution of quasars (the high-redshift cutoff, in particular) via cumulative extinction by foreground galaxies along typical lines of sight. Estimates of star-formation rates and mass-to-light ratios in individual galaxies are strongly dependent on estimates of internal absorption in galaxies. Assessing the “typical” extinction within spiral galaxies has proven controversial, and various approaches give substantially different results (and the various interpretations of these results diverge even more widely). Although the presence of obscuring matter was clear from the earliest systematic galaxy photography (Curtis (1918)), only much later was the connection between inclination and surface brightness used to estimate how much internal extinction there might be (Holmberg (1958)). Holmberg’s reassuring conclusion, that internal extinction is not a major factor in the global emerging light from spiral galaxies, eventually came to be challenged on two grounds. Disney et al. (1989) showed that the blue colors and inclination behavior of spiral disks could be consistent with models of high optical depth, so that what we see is dominated by a small proportion of unreddened starlight. Valentijn (1990) drew attention to this issue by analyzing the surface brightness and inclination of spirals in the ESO-LV catalog (Lauberts & Valentijn (1989)), and claiming that these quantities are empirically so independent that typical spirals must be optically thick to blue light across much of their visible disks. This analysis (though not necessarily its conclusion) was challenged by Burstein et al. (1991), who attributed Valentijn’s main result to possible selection effects in the galaxies included in the ESO-LV sample, and asserted that the problem could only be solved when truly volume-limited galaxy samples could be assembled.

Because of the assumptions required in using these model-based techniques to estimate extinctions, we have pursued a more direct approach: observing overlapping galaxy pairs to measure dust extinction in foreground spirals via differential surface photometry. As set out in White & Keel (1992), the ideal case for such an analysis has a foreground spiral half projected against a similarly sized background elliptical. This geometry allows us to recover estimates of the light from each galaxy by itself, using symmetry from the non-overlapping portions of the images, and thence to reconstruct the absorption in the overlapping part of the foreground spiral, limited only by the level of asymmetry in the spiral (since elliptical and S0 systems are so precisely symmetric). An extensive ground-based program (White et al. (2000), hereafter WKC; White et al. (1996); Keel & White (1995)) identified the best candidates for such analysis, and measured disk opacities for 10 spiral galaxies. The general results were:

– spiral arms and resonance rings can have large optical depths ($`\tau _B>2`$) over a wide range of galactocentric distance.

– interarm dust has a roughly exponential distribution with radius, and causes only mild extinction in the outer disk (typically $`A_B0.5`$ only within 0.4$`R_{25}`$).

– the extinction ratios from $`B`$ to $`I`$ passbands are greyer than the mean Milky Way curve, which we interpreted as evidence of patchy or clumpy extinction on unresolved size scales.

This last point made it especially desirable to measure dust properties on finer spatial scales, perhaps recovering the intrinsic reddening curve of the material and facilitating a comparison between grain populations in various spiral galaxies. This was pursued using two approaches. We describe here high spatial resolution observations achieved by HST imaging of two especially amenable galaxy pairs, AM1316-241 and AM0500-620 (plus archival data on the backlit high-velocity system in NGC 1275). A complementary analysis, comparing far-IR and submillimeter emission with optical absorption measures for three overlapping galaxy pairs (including AM1316-241) was presented by Domingue et al. (1999).

These galaxy pairs were selected as the most promising cases, for symmetry and angular size, from the initial survey reported by WKC. The two newly-observed pairs were both initially catalogued by Arp & Madore (1987). AM1316-241 (ESO 508-IG45) consists of a highly inclined spiral in front of an elliptical galaxy with very nearly circular isophotes, as measured from the nonoverlapping regions. The spiral has measured redshift $`cz=10365`$ km s-1, notably larger than that of the elliptical (9700 km s-1, White & Keel 1992; Donzelli & Pastoriza 2000). AM0500-620 (ESO 119-IG27) consists of a nearly face-on spiral of type Sb partially projected in front of a smooth system with a light profile suggesting an S0 classification. Donzelli & Pastoriza list heliocentric velocities of 9005 and 8811 km s-1 for the spiral and elliptical components, respectively. For linear scales, we adopt a Hubble constant of 75 km s-1 Mpc-1, for which a single WFPC2 $`0.1\mathrm{}`$ pixel subtends 65 and 57 pc, respectively, in AM1316-241 and AM0500-620. We also consider archival WFPC2 data on the object in the foreground of NGC 1275; in this case the foreground system has a redshift $`cz=8200`$ km s-1, while NGC 1275 itself has $`cz=5264`$ km s-1. Given their context in the Perseus/Abell 426 cluster, the line-of-sight separation of these two galaxies is almost indeterminate. Some suggest that the two galaxies are strongly interacting, perhaps enhancing the luminosity of the emission-line filaments around NGC 1275 proper (Hu et al. (1983)), and absorption geometry indicates that the foreground system must lie at least outside these filaments (Keel (1983)). For the PC CCD, which encompasses most of the foreground absorption, the image scale in this case is 15 pc/pixel, although we worked with mosaiced data at 30 pc/pixel.

## 2 Data and image analysis

The two overlapping elliptical/spiral pairs AM0500-620 and AM1316-241 were observed with WFPC2 in the $`B`$ (F450W) and $`I`$ (F814W) passbands, with rootnames for the image sequences of u3lw04 and u3lw03 respectively. In each case, the total exposures were 2000 seconds ($`I`$) and 2600 seconds ($`B`$), split into halves for cosmic-ray recognition and rejection. The individual exposures in each filter were combined using the crrej task in STSDAS for cosmic-ray removal, plus cleaning “by hand” of a few particle events missed by the automated procedure. Additional 120-second $`B`$ and 60-second $`I`$ exposures were taken in case the galaxy nuclei saturated on the longer exposures, as indeed happened in $`I`$ for a $`1.0\times 0.5`$-arcsecond region at the center of the elliptical in AM1316-241. Both members of AM0500-620 fit comfortably in the WF3 CCD field, while AM1316-241 stretched across both WF2 and WF3, with WF2 containing the outer end of the foreground disk. Images in both filters were registered to within 0.2 pixels, so we compare the two passbands without any pixel interpolation.

As often happens, the WFPC2 images reveal significant structures in the background galaxies which were not at all apparent from our ground-based imagery. Fortunately, these have at most a slight impact on our ability to do the image modeling required for an opacity measurement. The background galaxy in AM0500-620 (Fig. 1) now shows a central spiral pattern spanning the innermost $`2.6\mathrm{}=1.4`$ kpc, including dust lanes and bright knots (of the appropriate luminosity to be star clusters, at $`B=20.3`$ or $`M_B=15`$ and fainter). We therefore cannot measure foreground absorption this close to the nucleus, since it is unclear which galaxy is associated with a particular small dust feature. The elliptical in AM1316-241 (Fig. 2) has a small linear bright feature, perhaps an edge-on stellar disk, spanning a diameter of $`1.3\mathrm{}=0.8`$ kpc and aligned in roughly the same direction as the foreground spiral disk. This structure has no effect on our measurements of dust in the foreground galaxy.

As described by WKC, our opacity measurements require modeling of the intrinsic light distributions of both foreground and background galaxies in a region where they overlap. In such a region of overlap, if the background galaxy has an unabsorbed intensity $`I_B`$, the foreground galaxy contributes an intensity $`I_F`$, and the total observed intensity is $`I`$, then the effective optical depth $`\tau `$ through the foreground galaxy is

$$e^\tau =\frac{II_F}{I_B}.$$

In general, we of course cannot directly separate foreground from background emission in regions where the two galaxies are superposed. We instead estimate $`I_F`$ and $`I_B`$ from symmetric, non-overlapping regions of the galaxies. The two pairs we consider here were selected to be the best pairs known for such an analysis, based on angular size and symmetry of both pair members and the improved modeling that is possible if each galaxy is about half overlapping, leaving the other half as a symmetry template. For background E/S0 galaxies, estimates of $`I_B`$ are especially accurate (to better than 1% ) since we can make a two-dimensional symmetric model based on all parts of the galaxy that are unlikely to be overlapped by any material associated with the foreground galaxies. In practice, stars, background galaxies, and any other fine structures are masked during model fitting. Residuals from the fit can be evaluated in the non-overlapping areas, giving us a point-by-point assessment of how accurate the modeling has been. We perform these operations in the observed pixel frame, without any rebinning which would degrade resolution in some parts of the field of view.

In the case of NGC 1275, the foreground system and intrinsic structures cover enough area that several rounds of masking were needed to get a smooth symmetric background model. We used symmetry to provide an initial guess at intensities in the area not imaged around the PC chip, as needed by the STSDAS ellipse routine to provide a large enough fraction of the elliptical isophotes in some ranges of semimajor axis.

Larger errors will be introduced through uncertainties in the foreground galaxy intensity $`I_F`$, since spirals are rich in structure. AM0500-620 is attractive for this analysis since its grand-design pattern is highly symmetric; the ridgelines of its spiral pattern lie within $`1\mathrm{}`$ of their mirror reflections. Our point of departure for modeling it was rotation through $`180^{}`$, median filtering with an 11-pixel ($`1.1\mathrm{}`$) square window to remove bright clusters and associations so we need to deal only with positive structural residuals, and subtraction. In AM1316-241, the opposing outer arm at the relevant radius is both smooth and of rather low surface brightness, so that it does not offer a large uncertainty in accounting for foreground light if the spiral is even roughly symmetric at these radii. It proved useful to model the galaxies in each pair iteratively, using a first-guess model of the background galaxy to isolate emission from the foreground galaxy, subtract this from the data and derive an improved background model, and so on. Scatter in the residuals indicates that the errors in $`e^\tau `$ are 0.11-0.15 per pixel in $`I`$ for AM0500-620 and somewhat better, 0.06-0.10, for AM1316-241; photon statistics and systematic errors from structure in the foreground galaxies contribute about equally to the error budget. The foreground corrections range from 5–30% in AM1316-241 and from 2–15% in AM0500-620, so that departures from symmetry in the foreground light distribution will be multiplied by these factors in their impact on derived opacity values.

Scattering of background galaxy light by dust in the foreground galaxy could reduce the effective optical depth we measure. Numerical integrations to estimate this effect, starting from plausible line-of-sight separations between the galaxies, were described by WKC, and these remain valid for the new data. The relevant quantity is not the fractional amount of scattered light itself, but the differential scattering between the point under consideration for opacity measurement and its symmetric counterpart in the foreground disk which was used to estimate $`I_F`$. For these pairs, this effect is small: less than 3% for AM0500-620 and less than 1% for AM1316-241.

Realization of Eq. (1) for these images yields maps of residual intensity $`e^\tau `$ as shown in Figs. 3–5. We work primarily with residual intensity (transmission), denoted $`T_B`$ and $`T_I`$ rather than optical depth $`\tau `$ or magnitudes of extinction $`A_B`$ and $`A_I`$ for statistical measurements, because the errors in this linear quantity are much better behaved (being symmetrically distributed) than in the logarithmic measures. In both systems, the $`I`$ data are of higher quality than those in $`B`$ despite the smaller extinction at $`I`$, resulting both from the better $`S/N`$ ratio of the initial data, the better symmetry, and reduced influences of young clusters and associations in the redder passband.

## 3 Distribution of dust absorption

The spiral components of these pairs offer interesting distinctions, suggesting some of the variety that must be present among spiral galaxies. The dust in AM1316-241 is very strongly concentrated to the prominent arm, now seen as a rich filamentary pattern, with none seen outside this arm (to quite low limits) and only a small amount inside the arm (until the background intensity has dropped too low to allow measurement of dust in the next spiral feature inward). In AM0500-620, there are several very narrow spiral features outlined by dust, including a spur between two of the prominent arms, plus a significant component of interarm obscuration. The arm/interarm distinction that proved useful in ground-based work remains valid at this increased resolution, and is in fact even clearer. At all projected radii that we can sample, we see a strong distinction between dust in spiral arms and spurs on the one hand, and more smoothly distributed interarm dust on the other. The regions we can usefully analyze span the range $`0.530.72R_{25}`$ in AM0500-620, and $`0.440.80R_{25}`$ in AM1316-241.

One global description of absorption effects is the fraction of area covered at various extinction values. Fig. 6 shows both differential and cumulative distributions of area as functions of transmission $`T_B`$ for the regions in AM1316-241 and AM0500-620 which are well measured. The two are different in detail. In particular, AM0500-620 has a larger fraction of area with low opacity than AM1316-241; furthermore, AM1316-241 has an obviously bimodal distribution of opacity, while AM0500-620 does not. Half the area in AM1316-241 is covered by dust with a $`B`$ transmission of $`T_B=0.63`$ or greater, while the corresponding halfway point in AM0500-620 is $`T_B0.82`$. Typical pixel-by-pixel errors are 0.1 in transmission, as shown by the width of the spike near zero extinction ($`T_B=1`$) in AM1316-241, so that the number of points with $`T_B<0.1`$ is consistent with scatter from points higher in the distribution, so that we see no evidence for pixel-scale areas passing less than 10% of the light ($`A_B>2.5`$). These distributions are clearly area- rather than intensity-weighted, so these are the kinds of measures that are useful in coverage problems such as evaluating the effect of galaxy disks in absorbing QSO light.

We use the compromise dust mixture from Domingue et al. (1999) to estimate the dust mass seen in these regions, and compare arm and interarm contributions. This mixture (about midway between pure graphite and pure silicate grains in their optical properties and density) has mass column density $`\rho =2.41\times 10^5\tau _B`$ g cm-2, or $`0.12\tau _B`$ $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$ pc-2. The transmission maps can thus be turned into column density maps for each overlapped area. As a guide in interpreting the figures, $`\tau =1`$ in the $`I`$ images corresponds to a dust mass per pixel of 900 $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$ in AM0500-620 and 1166 $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$ in AM1316-241.

In AM0500-620, the arm/interarm contrast is much higher than we saw from the ground in WKC, because much of what appeared to be diffuse interarm extinction is now resolved into the prominent spur cutting across the main spiral pattern. Defining arm features at $`\tau _B0.15`$, the boundary of contiguous arm extinction, or $`57`$ $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$ per pixel, we find that 97% of the dust mass is in arm regions comprising 54% of the projected area. Higher column-density cuts yield further relations: 55% (36%) of the dust mass is contained within 20% (10%) of the projected area. The most prominent cloud complex, above center in the spur, has a total dust mass of about $`1.4\times 10^5`$ $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$. For a typical Galactic gas-to-dust ratio of 300 by mass, this implies a total mass in the cloud of order $`4\times 10^7`$ $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$, typical for a large molecular-cloud complex extending almost 2 kpc in an arm.

Individual clouds are less distinct in AM1316-241. Several individual clumps on $`0.40.8\mathrm{}`$ (250-600 pc) scales have dust masses in the range $`37\times 10^4`$ $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$. The concentration to the arm pattern is pronounced here as well, with 89% of the mass in the overlap region contained in contiguous structures occupying half the area. The 10% of the area with the highest column densities contains 31% of the dust.

Our analysis for NGC 1275 is necessarily less complete than for the two AM pairs, since photometry alone cannot be used to independently assess the amount of foreground light coming from a completely backlit galaxy. We have tried to limit the impact of this uncertainty by masking all pixels bluer than a limiting value in $`B/I`$ flux ratio, which includes many pixels with obvious absorption. This leaves us unable to derive reliable covering fractions, since the blue clusters are distributed in almost the same way as the dust (frequently with a systematic offset such as is often seen between dust and stars in typical spiral arms). In fact, the distributions of blue clusters and absorption (Fig. 5) suggest that most of the bright blue clusters studied by Carlson et al. (1998) are in fact part of the foreground galaxy and not of NGC 1275 itself.

Of the regions we can measure in NGC 1275, $`T_I=0.45`$ is the lowest $`I`$-band (F702W for this object) transmission found in areas large enough to be real detections; the areal distribution of $`T_I`$ is nearly flat from $`T_I=0.600.90`$. The dust lanes are about as optically thick as the spiral arms in the other two systems. However, as noted below, the extinction curve in this system is drastically different from what we find for the two other spirals. This may signify a real difference in the grain population, or it may be due to the foreground galaxy being embedded in the “background” galaxy, so some of the near side light from the “background” galaxy may not be absorbed by the foreground galaxy. The structures of both absorption and excess emission from blue clusters and associations strongly resemble a late-type spiral in at least the northwest half of the foreground system, as seen in Fig. 5. This is in accord with several previous studies identifying this object as a late-type spiral, seen almost edge-on and perhaps being disrupted by a very rapid tidal encounter with the background galaxy (Keel (1983); Hu et al. (1983)).

### 3.1 Fractal structure in dust distributions?

Indications that the H I in several nearby galaxies can be modeled as scale-free fractal distributions (Westpfahl et al. 1999) motivate a similar analysis of the dust maps described above. One prominent symptom of fractal behavior is a scale-free relation between the perimeter of a contour and the scale length over which it is integrated or smoothed for the measurement. We employ a perimeter-scale test, implementing the box-counting procedure of Westpfahl et al. Specifically, the length of various contours was evaluated in transmission maps for various values of $`T_I`$ and for smoothing lengths of 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 pixels, so that no resampling of pixel values affects the results. This evaluation was done by creating masked images cut above and below desired thresholds, then counting the number of pixels making the transition. We plot this relation using perimeters as scaled to the original pixel size (rather than block-averaged effective pixels at each scale), so the box-counting dimensions will be the slope of the relation plus one.

In AM1316-241, the perimeter-scale relation is nearly linear (in the log for both quantities) over scales from 2–16 pixels (130–1000 pc), when contours are used for transmission values $`T_I=0.50.9`$ on the higher-quality $`I`$ map (Fig. 7). The measured perimeter for one-pixel smoothing scales (i.e. the original data) is larger than the extrapolated value from larger smoothing lengths, for all transmission levels. Numerical experiments using block-averaged and PSF-convolved versions of the original image confirm that this discrepancy cannot be due to the numerical properties of the algorithm (which operates stepwise in exactly the same way on going from 1–2 pixels as, for example, from 2–4); this result is in the opposite sense of any smoothing effects due to the finite PSF of WFPC2 images (which would contribute about a 20% perimeter reduction due to smoothing). However, the effects of finite signal-to-noise ratio in the data can contribute significantly to apparent structure at small opacities on scales 1–2 pixels. The effect is most apparent for small opacity because the local slope in residual intensity is smaller, so a given amount of noise will move the contour at a particular level by a large amount. We estimate the magnitude of the effect by recomputing the area-perimeter relation for smoothing lengths of 1,2, and 4 pixels for subsections of the AM1316-241 dust lane, selected to have different typical signal-to-noise levels. Indeed, this shows that the perimeters derived for the original data at transmission 0.9 are overestimated for smaller signal-to-noise, and that the effect can approach 50% for the lowest-quality data involved. It is much smaller, never greater than 20%, for smoothing scales of two pixels, and is negligible for 4–8 pixel smoothing. Fig. 7 includes circled points incorporating these corrections, which fall closer to the linear extrapolations from larger smoothing scales. There is still some excess at single-pixel sampling, although the effects of noise are difficult to model precisely enough to tell whether this is a genuine physical effect.

There is marginal evidence that the slope of the logarithmic perimeter-scale relation (i.e. negative of the box-counting dimension) varies systematically with transmission, from $`0.35`$ for $`T_I=0.80.9`$ to $`0.42`$ for $`T_I=0.5`$ (though the scatter between transmission values is substantial). This may be due to the overlap of individual structures, or may reflect intrinsic properties of the distribution. Thus, while the contours at constant transmission are individually scale-free for sampling lengths $`2`$ pixels, the scaling seen for different transmission values is not consistent. A slope of -0.4 is representative of the whole data set for this object, leading to a box-counting dimension $`D_b=1.4`$. As noted by Westpfahl et al. (1999), while the various ways of measuring dimension for arbitrary contours need not coincide, they are often very close for astronomical applications. A dimension $`1.4`$ lies within the range 1.2–1.5 found for projected H I distributions in nearby galaxies by Westpfahl et al., so this may be a typical range for cold ISM constituents.

The traditional definition of the fractal dimension comes from Mandelbrot’s equation for a group of contours at different levels but the same smoothing scale, with perimeter $`P`$ and area $`A`$:

$$P^{1/D}=\mathrm{constant}\times A^{1/2}$$

where the constant may take on different values for various smoothing scales. For these data, we find that the area enclosed by a contour at a given level is closely constant for various smoothing values, in fact as constant as numerical scatter will preserve (to within 10% over a factor of 8 in smoothing scale for well-sampled contours). The near-constancy of area implies that the mass estimates derived above from absorption at the observed resolution are not significantly affected by subpixel structure. We are unable to fit a unique fractal dimension $`D`$ from this relation (Fig. 8), because the observed $`\mathrm{log}P\mathrm{log}A`$ relation is very nonlinear (being close to parabolic with a clear maximum). The most we can then say about the projected dust distribution in this context is that it has fractal aspects as seen in the scaling behavior of individual contours, but not as seen in the whole family of contours at different levels for a given smoothing length. For large smoothing scales (4 pixels or more), the scaling behavior exhibits a slope near 0.35 in the log area - log perimeter plane, implying a dimension 0.7 (twice the slope).0.7 (twice the slope). This differs strongly from the box-counting dimension of 1.4, as well as being very dependent on smoohting length. The dust distribution we observe thus shows some aspects of fractal behavior but does not satisfy the Mandelbot definition for these reasons.

In AM0500-620 the region of overlap is about two times smaller than in AM1316-241, so analysis of its geometry is necessarily sketchier. Applying the box-counting procedure to a $`64\times 64`$-pixel region shows approximate scaling behavior all the way down to single-pixel scales (Fig. 9), in contrast to what we see in AM1316-241. These data are consistent, therefore, with a fractal or scale-free dust distribution on scales from 50-400 pc, while the size of the backlit region does not allow us to measure scales larger than this. However, we note that higher noise per pixel in this case might to some extent mimic pixel-scale structure in the contours. In contrast to AM1316-241, the fitted slope of the logarithmic perimeter-scale relation flattens on going to larger extinction, this time from $`0.55`$ at $`T_I=`$0.8–0.9 to $`0.2`$ at 0.6. This is the level at which the size of the analyzed region introduces an artificial limit to the perimeter measures.

### 3.2 Fine structure and the reddening law

A major goal of these observations is to quantify the effects of dust on scales finer than the kpc resolutions afforded by ground-based images. In particular, we ask whether there are preferred scales for absorbing complexes, or whether the spectrum of structure continues down to the WFPC2 resolution limit. Our analysis of the structure in opacity maps, as described above, is one way to address these questions. In another approach, we consider how the residual (transmitted) intensities $`T_B`$ and $`T_I`$ are correlated pixel by pixel. Smoothly distributed dust and dust clumped in high opacity “bricks” are two extremes for the dust distribution which lead to different predictions for the wavelength dependence of the extinction. The extinction of smoothly distributed dust should follow the grains’ intrinsic reddening law (for example, the Galactic extinction curve); alternatively, if the dust is clumped into opaque clouds, the extinction curve would be “grayer” due to saturation at shorter wavelengths. Fig. 10 shows the two-color extinction behavior of the dust in AM1316-241, for the region with the highest background intensity and therefore S/N ratio (the same area used above for the fractal analysis). The error distribution for individual points will be approximately given by the elliptical scatter for points near (1,1) in these plots, and this error is not directly dependent on the local opacity since the background intensity rather than amount of absorption usually controls the error. This scatter is slightly correlated between the two passbands since fine structure in the foreground galaxy will consist largely of brighter and bluer stellar associations. The adjacent panel shows curves predicted for various values of $`R=A_V/E_{BV}`$, shown for values $`R=2.14.1`$. Because of the finite passbands and large extinction range involved, these curves were calculated rigorously starting with the photon-number spectrum of a model old stellar population (using the models described by Charlot & Bruzual 1991), applying reddening using the Cardelli, Clayton, & Mathis (1989) parameterization and varying the value of $`R`$, then folding the result through the WFPC2 sensitivity with each relevant filter curve. To derive a best-fitting values of the total-to-selective extinction ratio $`R`$ in the presence of comparable relative error in both axes, we consider statistics within narrow slices of width 0.05 in residual intensity at $`B`$, and evaluate the mean and median values of $`I`$ residual intensity within these slices. The results are listed, with standard deviations of the means, quartiles of the distributions, and modal estimates, in Table 1, and are shown with a family of curves generated for $`R=2.14.1`$ in Fig. 10. The listed mode is the IRAF estimator, constructed by automatic binning and interpolation for such relatively sparse data sets. These statistics should be most useful in the middle of the extinction distribution, where, for example, the tilted cutoff at the high-extinction end will not bias the results; we considered various ranges in $`B`$-band residual intensity for the fit. Using a $`\chi ^2`$ fit to the means (since mean values come with well-defined error bars), the range of residual intensity 0.15-0.90 gives the best fit, reduced $`\chi ^2=2.3`$ with one degree of freedom (the value of $`R`$), namely $`R=3.6_{0.3}^{+0.5}`$ where the error range is for 90% confidence. Since variation in $`R`$ has a very constrained effect on the form of the curve, we also considered fits in which the top and bottom bins were included or excluded, to test whether their errors, which are largely irreducible by changing $`R`$, dominate the overall statistic. In all cases, the 90% confidence bounds on $`R`$ include the range 3.2–3.6, with preferred values 3.2–3.6. The $`\chi ^2`$ values for these ranges are worse than the fiducial fit above. The value in AM1316-241 is consistent with the Milky Way value, with some evidence that the extinction curve is slightly flatter ($`R`$ greater) than the standard Galactic law. The dust follows a simple screen model much more closely than we found from ground-based data (WKC). This must be largely a resolution effect; at higher spatial resolution, we will see the dust follow its intrinsic reddening law more closely as clumping becomes less important. There is marginal evidence for a smaller value of $`R`$ at smaller extinction, with the formal fit for the residual-intensity range $`0.750.9`$ of $`R=2.9`$. However, the number of fitting bins is small enough to make this at best a tentative statement.

We do see direct evidence for the effective reddening law changing at different resolution on going to larger scales than the WFPC2 pixels, which accounts for the greyer extinction found from ground-based data (White et al. 2000). Block-averaging the transmission images to lower resolution shows a transition to a fitted value $`R=4.1`$ between $`0.4\mathrm{}`$ and $`0.8\mathrm{}`$ pixel sizes. Effective pixel sizes $`0.20.4\mathrm{}`$ give color distributions which are consistent with the $`R`$ value fit to the original pixels. The transition between $`R`$ values that appear representative of the physical grain properties, seen at the full data resolution, and the artificially grey $`R`$ values we saw from the ground, mostly takes place in this range from 200–400 pc resolution.

The color behavior in AM0500-620 is broadly consistent with what we see in AM1316-241, but less well-determined. The signal-to-noise ratio of the extinction in each pixel is lower by almost a factor 2, so the scatter in the two-band transmission plot (Fig. 11) is larger than for AM1316-241. This is due both to weaker background light and to a larger contribution from foreground light in the spiral, which introduces a larger error in correction. A formal $`\chi ^2`$ fit to statistics in bins of B transmission (Table 2), as done for AM1316-241, yields a 90% confidence interval of $`R=1.5\pm 0.4`$, and the best-fitting $`\chi ^2=2.5`$ per degree of freedom, a poor fit. At face value, the dust in AM0500-620 has a much larger selective-to-total extinction ratio than Galactic grain populations. This behavior is in the wrong sense to be caused by either scattering or young stars, unless they are both highly reddened and distributed in such a way as to show no bright or very red structures in color-ratio images. The distribution of $`T_I`$ in a narrow range of $`T_B`$ is quite asymmetric in this object, as seen from the systematic differences among mean, median, and mode estimates in Fig. 11. The peak of the distribution, shown by the modal behavior, most nearly tracks the $`R=24`$ curves, but even in this case the match is no more than broadly consistent. Repeating the procedure for only the single dust complex with the best-determined extinction values (Table 3, Fig. 12) gives results more consistent with the Galactic mean for all three measures (mean, median, mode), and a value $`R=2.5\pm 0.4`$, which may indicate that the results from the whole overlap region are less trustworthy.

We also examined the two-color reddening behavior in NGC 1275, restricting the analysis to pixels covering a total area of 55 arcsec2 from 7 rectangular regions including obvious dust features, and excluding pixels which were masked by a color criterion intended to reduce contamination from (presumably blue) foreground starlight. The results are not consistent with a Galactic law (Table 4, Fig. 13). This could mean that we are unable to remove the foreground light even with a color criterion, that the dust in the foreground system of NGC 1275 is quite different from Milky Way dust, or that the foreground system actually lies well inside the stellar distribution of NGC 1275 proper. The $`R`$ parameter becomes ill-determined for extinction that is so nearly grey; in this instance, values of $`R`$ in the range 18–35 are acceptable in a $`\chi ^2`$ sense when fitted to the mean values and statistical errors in Table 4.

## 4 Summary

We have used HST imaging of two spiral galaxies partially backlit by elliptical and S0 systems to provide direct measures of extinction and dust structure of the foreground spirals. This approach provides extinction estimates which are independent of the assumptions about internal structure that are necessary to perform many of the statistically-based opacity tests often applied to this question.

Opacity maps show an interesting contrast between the spiral components of AM1316-241 and AM0500-620. In both cases, the arm/interarm dichotomy in extinction is strong. However, the statistics of coverage at various transmission levels are notably different in the two galaxies. The arm/interarm dichotomy in extinction is strengthened at the high resolution afforded by HST; much of what appeared in an earlier ground-based study as diffuse interarm dust is now seen to be comprised of narrow spurs crossing the main spiral pattern (as in AM0500-620). For the areas we can analyze, located at radii of $`0.40.8R_{25}`$, the dust is heavily concentrated to arms, with half the dust mass contained in only 20% of the projected area and 95–98% of the dust mass contained in half the area. Kiloparsec-scale complexes of absorbing material are estimated to contain $`37\times 10^4`$ $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$ of dust grains, with correspondingly large implied gas masses, $`12\times 10^7`$ $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$, if we assume a typical Galactic gas-to-dust ratio. Interarm extinction is quite small, although the statistical distribution by area differs for the two spirals. There is a well-defined low-extinction peak in the areal distribution for AM1316-241, while the distribution of extinction values is much broader and continuous with the arm regions in AM0500-620.

Reddening curves have been measured by comparing transmitted light pixel by pixel between $`B`$ and $`I`$ passbands. For AM1316-241, we find a well-determined slope given by $`R=A_V/E_{BV}=3.4\pm 0.2`$, close to the Galactic value of 3.1 derived largely from diffuse regions. The data quality for AM0500-620 is poorer, and the overall fit to a Galactic law (or any plausible reddening law) is poor. For the single cloud in AM0500-620 with the best data, we do see reasonable reddening behavior, with a formal fit of $`R=2.5\pm 0.4`$. In NGC 1275, our accuracy is limited by our inability to estimate the brightness of the foreground galaxy. We have used a color criterion to eliminate pixels with obvious foreground light and find the remainder have a reddening curve much flatter (greyer) than the local norm. This might imply a different dust composition, a different fine-scale distribution, or that the foreground system is so close to NGC 1275 that it is at least partially embedded within its stellar distribution (so that our simple geometric scheme for measuring opacity breaks down).

We speculate, moreover, that the dust grain size distribution in the NGC 1275 foreground system has been truncated at the low end by sputtering in the hot intracluster medium of Abell 426. Lack of particles smaller than $`0.5\mu `$ would flatten the extinction curve effectively. Following Draine & Salpeter (1979), the survival time scale for particles of radius $`a`$ embedded in a hot medium of density $`n`$ is

$$t_{sp}=10^6\frac{a}{n}\mathrm{years},$$

for $`a`$ in $`\mu `$m and $`n`$ in cm-3. For a representative value of $`n=10^3`$, the timescale for $`a=0.25\mu `$ is $`10^9`$ years. At the high velocity difference between this system and NGC 1275 proper (itself essentially at rest in the cluster) it would have moved at least 3 Mpc during the time it would take to sputter a Galactic grain population to this extent. This is comparable to the extent of X-ray emission from the Perseus cluster (Ettori, Fabian, & White (1998)). A strict application of this sputtering prescription would weight the distribution toward larger grains only for very specific size distributions, since for spherical grains and a power-law size distribution, the net effect of sputtering would be to shrink all grains at a constant rate by area (rather than volume). In this case, a given set of original grains would move down the size distribution in step, with the only net affect being progressive loss of the largest grains. However, recent modeling of sputtering effects on more realistic grain structures suggest that the net effect can indeed by a greying of the extinction curve (Aguirre 1999a ). Furthermore, preferential ejection of small grains due to either ram pressure or galactic winds would weight the distribution toward larger sizes (Aguirre 1999b ). If the grain population in the foreground system of NGC 1275 has indeed been altered, the original dust mass and typical $`B`$ extinction would have been substantially larger than we observe (with the $`I`$ extinction being less affected, since larger grains are more important at this wavelength). If the system has interacted with the intracluster medium, the small H I mass (van Gorkom & Ekers (1983)) is easier to reconcile with the morphological evidence for a late Hubble type, since H I is the first ISM component lost from cluster spirals (Cayatte et al. (1990); Bravo-Alfaro et al. (2000)).

We have used the perimeter-smoothing length test to see whether the dust in these galaxies can be well described by fractal (scale-free) structures, as has been found for H I distributions in nearby spirals. We find scale-free behavior for the perimeter of a given contour in dust column density as a function of smoothing scale from 0.05–8 kpc. However, we cannot determine a fractal dimension from these data, because the scaling between different contours (at different transmission levels) at a given smoothing length does not show the requisite linear relation for log (area) versus log (perimeter) relation (the perimeter in fact peaks within the measured area range). We can thus describe the dust distribution as fractal-like but not formally fractal, with box-counting dimension close to 1.4 but area-perimeter measures giving a dimensions near 0.7. The box-counting dimension is within the range found for H I structures in galaxies by Westpfahl et al. (1999), but given the discrepancy between the two dimensions and the non-monotonic area-perimeter relation, the dust distribution cannot be accurarely described as fractal. The area covered at a given extinction level is nearly independent of smoothing scale over the range we can measure, so that our dust mass estimates are not biased by structures smaller than our resolution.

What processes define and control fine structure in the dust? Grains are generally strongly coupled to other components of the interstellar medium, both empirically and for robust theoretical reasons, so the dust distribution will reflect a range of physical processes that need not impact the grains directly. Strictly dynamical features of disk dynamics can concentrate the ISM into regions of high density, and can change the configuration of these regions on dynamical timescales (a recently discussed example is amplification of small fluctuations as seen in the nuclear dust patterns of NGC 2207; Elmegreen et al. (1998)). Energy input from stellar winds and supernovae has a crucial role in altering the small-scale structure of the ISM (Rosen & Bregman 1995), both mechanically and by driving phase changes (including grain evaporation in the most extreme environments). These data will not support a detailed analysis of such issues, but the differences in dust distributions may most plausibly be linked to changes in the energy-input rates and perhaps to different dominant mechanisms shaping the ISM in these two galaxies.

This work was supported by NASA HST grant GO-06438.01-95A. R. E. W. was supported in part by a National Research Council Senior Research Associateship at NASA GSFC. We thank Dave Westpfahl for secret tips on doing the fractal-index measurements within IRAF, and Bruce Elmegreen for asking some especially probing questions. Wentao Wu provided the specific Bruzual-Charlot model spectra for rigorous extinction calculations. Alex Rosen pointed out the role of stellar energy input for the scales of ISM structures. We thank the referee for forcing us to clarify the role of noise in the dimensional analysis and actually state the implied fractal dimensions.


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# Semiclassical Concepts in Magnetoelectronics

## I Introduction

Electron transport in layered magnetic systems can be directed parallel or perpendicular to the interfaces. The physics of transport in the latter, so-called current perpendicular to the plane (CPP) configuration, studied first by the Michigan State University Group with superconducting contacts  and by Gijs c.s. in microstructured pillars at arbitary temperatures , has been reviewed quite recently . The topic remains to attract the interest of the community and new insights have been obtained on issues as first-principles calculations of transport in disordered multilayers, phase coherence effects, transport with non-collinear magnetizations and spin-torques induced by applied currents. The present manuscript briefly reviews and compares these novel developments. Related topics of interest are superconductor-ferromagnet hybrids , spin-injection into carbon nanotubes  and semiconductors  or many-terminal devices .

Most studies have been carried out on multilayers consisting of many bilayer periods. In earlier studies attention was focussed on collinear magnetization profiles, i.e. that with antiparallel or parallel magnetization vectors for neighbouring layers. These experiments are well fitted by the so-called 2-channel series resistor model (2CSRM) which is discussed in the light of recent developments in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3 novel theoretical approaches are reviewed which describe non-collinear configurations.

## II Collinear magnetization

The experiments of perpendicular transport in magnetic multilayers are well described by the 2CSRM, i.e. an equivalent electric circuit of two spin channels in parallel, in which the resistance of each channel is the sum of the bulk and interface resistances. When all magnetizations are parallel the total resistance $`R_T`$ of a ferromagnetic/normal metal (F/N) multilayer of $`M`$ double layers reads

$$AR_T=M\left[\rho ^{\left(N\right)}d_N+\underset{s}{}\left(\rho _s^{\left(F\right)}d_F+2AR_s^{N/F}\right)\right],$$
(1)
where A is the cross section of the sample, $`\rho ^{\left(N\right)}`$ is the resistivity of the bulk normal metal,$`\rho _s^{\left(F\right)}`$ is the resistivity of the ferromagnet for spin direction $`s,`$ $`d_N`$ and $`d_F`$ are the layer thicknesses and $`R_s^{N/F}`$ are the spin-dependent interface resistances. The five parameters $`\rho ^{\left(N\right)},`$ $`\rho _s^{\left(F\right)},`$ and $`R_s^{N/F}`$ can be determined accurately by fitting experiments on numerous samples with different layer thicknesses and for antiparallel as well as parallel magnetic configurations . It was soon realized that the microscopic basis was to be found in semiclassical arguments . The most flexible theoretical framework turned out to be the linearized Boltzmann equation in the relaxation time approximation by Valet and Fert , which also included spin-flip processes. In this model the distribution function or local chemical potential $`f_s`$ for spin $`s`$ in the $`F`$ or $`N`$ bulk materials is governed by the one-dimensional diffusion equation:

$$\frac{^2f_s(x)}{x^2}=\frac{1}{2}\frac{f_s(x)f_s(x)}{l_{sf}^2}.$$
(2)
where $`\sigma _s`$ is the conductivity and spin-flip processes are included in terms of the spin-diffusion length $`l_{sf}`$. Interfaces were treated as thin regions with a different (low) mobility. The current for spin $`s`$ then reads:

$$j_s(x)=\sigma _s\frac{f_s(x)}{x},$$
(3)
When $`l_{sf}`$ $`d`$ the results are identical to the 2CSRM. However, this treatment is incomplete in that the discontinuities in the electronic structure at heterointerfaces are disregarded, which are essential for the electron transport properties since they scatter electrons even in clean samples . This can be seen most easily for an isolated interface in a constriction according to the Landauer-Büttiker formula :

$$G^{A/B}=\frac{1}{R^{A/B}}=\frac{e^2}{h}\underset{k_{}\nu s,k_{}^{}\nu ^{}s^{}}{}\left|t_{k_{}\nu s,k_{}^{}\nu ^{}s^{}}\right|^2=\frac{e^2}{h}\underset{\mu \mu ^{}}{}T_{\mu \mu ^{}}$$
(4)
where $`t_{\mu \mu ^{}},T_{\mu \mu ^{}}`$ are the transmission coefficients and probabilities of states $`\mu =k_{}\nu s`$ at the Fermi energy with (tranverse) wave vector $`k_{}`$ parallel to the interface and band index $`\nu `$. For a ballistic interface $`k_{}`$ and $`s`$ are conserved during scattering. This expression can be compared with that for a homogeneous point contact of the materials A and B with (Sharvin) conductances $`G^A>G^B`$. It is clear that any mismatch in the electronic structure will reduce the conductance $`G^{A/B}<G^A`$.

### A Interface resistance

Of interest is the microscopic explanation of the interface resistance parameter $`R^{A/B}`$ in Eq. (1) and its relation with Eq. (4). The success of the 2CSRM provides the guidance for a quantitative understanding of the experiments. The parameters which fit so many experiments turn out to be universal for a given material combination. The absence of a measurable dependence on the geometrical parameters $`d_N`$ and $`d_F`$ (when everything is kept the same) is a strong indication that quantum interference terms are negligibly small. For the large thicknesses which have predominantly been studied experimentally, this is not surprising. But also for significantly exchange-coupled multilayers, quantum well states should not significantly affect transport since disorder causes a large semiclassical background. A semiclassical model therefore should be appropriate for all but the cleanest samples with very thin layers. A simple yet efficient first principles procedure to incorporate the interfaces comes down to chopping the sample into slices of bulk layers and interfaces which scatter electrons, separated by fictitious non-scattering regions . The bulk layer scattering can be treated in terms of transmission and reflection matrices, modelled in two simple limits; the ballistic limit, in which no scattering occurs during the transmission through the bulk and the diffuse limit in which the scattering is isotropic, which means that the transmitted electrons do not retain any memory of the incident wave vectors. The transmission probabilities for the combined system then follows by the semiclassical concatenation of transmission and reflection probability matrices of the resistive elements in series . Indeed, the 2CSRM is recovered with interface resistances

$$R^{A/B}=\frac{h}{e^2}\frac{1}{T_{\mu \mu ^{}}}\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{1}{G^A}+\frac{1}{G^B}\right).$$
(5)
where we have corrected for the spurious geometrical Sharvin resistances . For ballistic bulk layer transmission

$$\left[R^{A/B}\right]^1=\frac{e^2}{h}\underset{\mu \nu }{}\left[\left(𝐈𝐓𝐑\right)^1𝐓\right]_{\mu \nu },$$
(6)
which is in fact the “old” Landauer formula. Both Eqs. (5) and (6) do not contain any parameters and provide a first-principles prescription for the semiclassical interface resistances. They hold not only in the metallic case but should be also valid when the interface is in the tunneling regime. Stiles and Penn  confirmed that the expression (5) agrees very well with the solutions of the Boltzmann equation.

Levy et al.  recently found strong effects of disorder in the leads on transport through tunnel junctions. Our discussion implies that these effects should be absent in a semiclassical description, which is at odds with the conclusions of Levy et al.. Interference effects between impurities and resonance states at the tunnel junction might provide an explanation .

### B First-principles calculations

The interface resistance has been calculated by first principles for specular interfaces in Refs.  for ballistic magnetic domain walls in Ref.  and diffuse interfaces in Ref. . In the table we summarize our results for specular and rough interfaces, the latter modelled as a 50%/50% bilayer alloy, and compare them with available experiments. Remarkable is the different behaviour of the Co$`|`$Cu as compared with the Fe$`|`$Cr interface with respect to the interface roughness: the spin contrast of the Co$`|`$Cu interface transparency is weakly enhanced by disorder, but strongly reduced in Fe$`|`$Cr. The message for experimentalists is that in Fe$`|`$Cr it should pay off to optimize the epitaxial growth parameters.

The Boltzmann equation has been solved numerically by Butler et al.  for Co$`|`$Cu$`|`$Co perpendicular spin valves (see also ). The constant relaxation time approximation for the bulk materials was used and distribution functions were matched via the transmission and reflection coefficients for specular interfaces. They found results for the interface resistance slightly different from that of . Butler et al. find a dependence of the interface resistance on small Cu thicknesses, which appears to contradict the universality of the parameters of the 2CSRM. These corrections are not the small quantum size effects found by Xia et al.  and by Tsymbal et al. , but are purely classical effects due to evanescent terms in the distribution functions. These can be interpreted as the corrections to the assumption of complete isotropy by Schep et al.  . The isotropy conditions is expected to be much better fulfilled when interface disorder is taken into account. It is clear that more, also experimental, work is needed to understand transport for very thin layer thicknesses in which the incomplete randomization and the appearance of quantum corrections will cause deviations from the two-channel resistor model.

## III Non-collinear magnetization

Electron transport in devices with non-collinear magnetizations have come into focus by the recent interest in the torque exerted on the magnetization by a spin-polarized injected current . The theories for collinear magnetization mentioned above have been extended to the case in which the magnetizations are not collinear, i.e. not parallel or antiparallel, namely via a magnetoelectronic circuit theory , and for CPP spin-valve structures, random matrix theory of transport  as well as a direct solution of the diffusion equation in the presence of an external magnetic field . Recently also exchange-biased CPP spin-valves are under scrutiny . We find that these approaches are equivalent and reduce to previous theories in the limit of collinear magnetization. An interesting point is that  do not start from the outset with a semiclassical approximation, but derive it from an isotropy assumption, thus put previous more or less ad hoc approaches on firm theoretical foundations.

### A Circuit theory

Transport in hybrid metallic systems can be described by a generalization of Kirchhoff’s theory of electronic circuits when parts of the system are not phase-coherently coupled. This approach has been pioneered in Ref.  for electronic networks with superconducting elements. It has recently been adopted also for magnetoelectronic circuits , like the Johnson spin transistor  or the 4-terminal mesoscopic spin valve of Jedema et al. . For a different approach to the many terminal magnetolectronic circuits see . The circuit theory can be derived from a given Stoner Hamiltonian in terms of the Keldysh non-equilibrium Green function formalism in spin space . The basic physics is provided by splitting up the system into reservoirs, resistors and nodes, where the latter can be real or fictitious (as discussed above). In order to arrive at a useful formalism, an isotropy assumption has to be introduced for the nodes, namely that the electron distributions in the nodes are isotropic, which implies sufficient disorder (or chaotic scattering) to allow for configurational averaging. It does not require any inelastic or dephasing scattering mechanism, although, when happening in the nodes, they will not hurt either. Because the spin-accumulation is not necessarily parallel to the spin-quantization axis, at each node the electron distribution at a given energy $`ϵ`$ can be denoted as $`\widehat{f}(ϵ),`$ where the hat ($`\widehat{}`$) denotes a $`2\times 2`$ matrix in spin-space. The external reservoirs are assumed to be in local equilibrium so that the distribution matrix is diagonal in spin-space and attains its local equilibrium value $`\widehat{f}=\widehat{1}f(ϵ,\mu _\alpha )`$, $`\widehat{1}`$ is the unit matrix, $`f(ϵ,\mu _\alpha )`$ is the Fermi-Dirac distribution function and $`\mu _\alpha `$ is the local chemical potential in reservoir $`\alpha `$. The direction of the magnetization of the ferromagnetic nodes is denoted by the unit vector $`𝐦_\alpha `$. The current through each contact can be calculated as a function of the distribution matrices on the adjacent nodes $`2\times 2`$ conductance tensors. The current matrix (for an F$`|`$N junctions) reads

$$e\widehat{I}=G^{}\widehat{u}^{}\left(\widehat{f}^F\widehat{f}^N\right)\widehat{u}^{}+G^{}\widehat{u}^{}\left(\widehat{f}^F\widehat{f}^N\right)\widehat{u}^{}G^{}\widehat{u}^{}\widehat{f}^N\widehat{u}^{}(G^{})^{}\widehat{u}^{}\widehat{f}^N\widehat{u}^{},$$
(7)
in terms spin-$`\frac{1}{2}`$rotation matrices $`\widehat{u}^s=\left(\widehat{1}+s\widehat{\sigma }\stackrel{}{m}\right)/2`$, distribution matrices $`\widehat{f}^F`$,$`\widehat{f}^N`$ on ferromagnetic and normal node, the spin-dependent conductances $`G^{}`$ and $`G^{}`$ (which in planar junctions should be corrected as discussed in Section II)

$`G^s={\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{h}}\left[M{\displaystyle \underset{nm}{}}|r_s^{nm}|^2\right]={\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{h}}{\displaystyle \underset{nm}{}}|t_s^{nm}|^2,`$

and the mixing conductance

$$G^{s,s}=\frac{e^2}{h}\left[M\underset{nm}{}r_s^{nm}(r_s^{nm})^{}\right],$$
(8)
where $`r_s^{nm},`$ $`t_s^{nm}`$ are the reflection and transmission coefficients, $`M`$ the number of modes in the absence of reflections. Spin-flips in the contacts have been disregarded. The spin-current conservation law

$$\underset{\alpha }{}\widehat{I}_{\alpha \beta }=\left(\frac{\widehat{f}_\beta }{t}\right)_{\text{rel}}=\frac{\widehat{1}\text{Tr}\widehat{f}^N2\widehat{f}^N}{2\tau _{sf}}$$
(9)
allows computation of the circuit properties as a function of the applied voltages, where $`\widehat{I}_{\alpha \beta }`$ denotes the $`2\times 2`$ current in spin-space from node (or reservoir) $`\alpha `$ to node (or reservoir) $`\beta `$ and the term on the right hand side describes spin-relaxation in the (normal) node. The right hand side of Eq. (9) can be set to zero when the spin-current in the node is conserved, i.e. when an electron resides on the node sufficiently shorter than the spin-flip relaxation time $`\tau _{sf}`$.

Some insight can be gained by re-writing the current and the distribution function in the form of a scalar particle and a vectorial spin contribution, $`\widehat{I}=(I_0+𝝈𝐈_s)/2`$, $`\widehat{f}^N=f_p^N+𝝈𝐬\mathrm{\Delta }f^N`$ and $`\widehat{f}^F=f_p^F+𝝈𝐦\mathrm{\Delta }f^F`$. The spin-current through an F$`|`$N interface can then be expanded into different vector components as:

$`𝐈_s`$ $`=`$ $`𝐦[(G^{}G^{})(f_p^Ff_p^N)+(G^{}+G^{})\mathrm{\Delta }f^F+(G^{}+G^{}2\text{Re}G^{})𝐬𝐦\mathrm{\Delta }f^N]`$ (11)
$`𝐬2\text{Re}G^{}\mathrm{\Delta }f^N+(𝐬\times 𝐦)2\text{Im}G^{}\mathrm{\Delta }f^N.`$
The vector spin current component perpendicular to the magnetization direction equals the spin-torque exerted by the polarized current on the ferromagnet .

### B Random matrix theory

Waintal et al.  have extended the random matrix theory of transport  to include non-collinear magnetizations in F$`|`$N$`|`$F junctions. This paper is focussed on the spin torque, but the physics is essentially the same as for transport in a disordered CPP spin valve with arbitrary magnetization configuration as discussed above. The objects which are averaged are the scattering matrices of the bulk layer of the normal metal assuming that all members of the ensemble fulfil the symmetry requirements of the problem and are equally probable. The theory is more intricate than in the case of superconducting S$`|`$N$`|`$S junctions , because the averaging has to be carried out over the eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Analytical results can be obtained for the leading term of an expansion into $`1/N`$, i.e. the inverse of the number of transport channels.

It is easily seen that the analytical relations obtained by Waintal et al.  for halfmetallic ferromagnetic elements agree with those from the circuit theory for the symmetric two-terminal device. The general case is less obvious, but by somewhat tedious manipulations a complete equivalence of the final equations for both theories can be proven . We may conclude from Waintal’s results that what seemed to be an assumption in the procedure of Schep et al. , viz. the semiclassical concatenation, can be derived from the isotropy assumption. Although not yet worked out, Waintal et al.’s approach can be generalized to include quantum corrections, which become important for a small number of channels, as well as many terminal configurations. It is not clear how spin-flip-relaxation processes can be incorporated, which is quite straight-forward for the circuit theory.

### C Diffusion equation for non-collinear transport

In some cases the theories above are not sufficient and the spatially dependent ditribution has to be evaluated. The spin-polarized electron distribution is characterized by a $`2\times 2`$ matrix in spin space of the form:

$$\widehat{f}^N(x)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\begin{array}{c}f_{}^N(x)\end{array}& \begin{array}{c}f_{}^N(x)\end{array}\\ \begin{array}{c}\\ f_{}^N(x)\end{array}& \begin{array}{c}\\ f_{}^N(x)\end{array}\end{array}\right).$$
(12)
When the size of the system $`L`$ is larger than the spin diffusion length $`l_{sf}`$, $`\widehat{f}^N(x)`$ depends on the position. We have studied transport through an F$`|`$N$`|`$F device under the condition $`l_fl_{sf}`$, where $`l_f=v_F\left(1/\tau +1/\tau _{sf}\right)^1`$ is the mean free path, $`v_F`$ is the Fermi velocity, $`\tau `$ the spin-conserving scattering time and $`\tau _{sf}`$ the spin-flip scattering time . Under the condition $`l_fl_{sf}=\sqrt{v_Fl_f\tau _{sf}/3}`$, we obtain the generalized diffusion equation in the normal metal

$$\frac{^2\widehat{f}^N(x)}{x^2}=\frac{1}{l_{sf}^2}\left(\widehat{f}^N(x)\widehat{\mathrm{𝟏}}\frac{\text{Tr}\left(\widehat{f}^N(x)\right)}{2}\right)\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}[\frac{g\mu _B}{2D}\left(\widehat{\sigma }\stackrel{}{B}\right),\text{ }\widehat{f}^N(x)]_{}.$$
(13)
Its solution, with boundary conditions at the interface governed by the conductance matrix, describes e.g. the precession of the spin-accumulation in an applied magnetic field and lead to a physical interpretation of the imaginary part of the mixing conductance .

### D CPP spin valve

The different approaches described above lead to an analytical expression for the total conductance of CPP spin valves as a function of the angle between the magnetizations of the different ferromagnets $`\theta `$, when $`l_{sf}L`$, at zero magnetic field ($`\stackrel{}{B}=0`$) and for symmetric contacts:

$`G^T(\theta )={\displaystyle \frac{G}{2}}\left(1P^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tan}^2\theta /2}{\mathrm{tan}^2\theta /2+\frac{\left|\eta \right|^2}{Re\eta }}}\right)`$

where $`G=G^{}+G^{},`$ $`P=\left(G^{}+G^{}\right)/G,`$

$$\eta =\frac{2G^{}}{G};\frac{\left|\eta \right|^2}{Re\eta }=\frac{4\left|G^{}\right|^2}{G^2}\frac{G}{2ReG^{}}=\frac{2\left|G^{}\right|^2}{GReG^{}}$$
(14)
The angular magnetoconductance reads:

$$\frac{G^T(\theta )G^T(0)}{G^T(\pi )G^T(0)}=\frac{\mathrm{tan}^2\theta /2}{\mathrm{tan}^2\theta /2+\frac{\left|\eta \right|^2}{Re\eta }}=\{\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta /2\\ \frac{Re\eta }{\left|\eta \right|^2}\mathrm{tan}^2\theta /2\end{array}\text{ for }\begin{array}{c}\eta =Re\eta 1\\ \eta \mathrm{}\end{array}$$
(15)
Balents and Egger  arrive at the same result in their study of spin-injection into carbon nanotubes in the non-interacting limit. The electron-electron interaction is found to enhance the mixing conductance.

## IV Discussion

Our understanding of the transport properties of the CPP multilayers is semi-quantitative for the parallel aligned and the as grown “virgin” samples, in which to a good approximation neighbouring magnetization vectors are antiparallel. The basis of this understanding is (1) knowledge of the magnetization configuration and (2) the 2CSRM. Bozec et al.  claimed to have found evidence for a breakdown of the 2CSRM. However, a recent study with intentionally alloyed bulk layers comes to different conclusions, i.e. that the 2CSRM should remain unchallenged for collinear magnetic structures, be they “type I” or “type II”, interleaved or separated .

The situation of the magnetic-field cycled “deflowered” samples is more difficult. The experiments of Bozec et al.  could be explained by a “spin-memory” effect caused by spin-flip at the interfaces which can be incorporated into the two-channel series resistor model . This picture requires that the magnetization at all intermediate fields is random but essentially collinear (except possibly at interfaces). An alternative explanation is Wiser’s hypothesis that the angle between the magnetizations of different layers is rotated during magnetization reversal . The transport properties based on this hypothesis can be computed in principle by the generalizations of the 2CSRM to non-collinear transport discussed above, which we may call “matrix series resistor model”. At the moment the magnetization distribution is not known sufficiently well, but it seems likely that non-collinearity and randomness both play a role. Exchange-biased CPP spin valves appear to be better suited to test the new theories than multilayers .

## V Acknowledgment

We acknowledge discussions with Kees Schep, Wolfgang Belzig, Bill Pratt, Jack Bass, Ilya Turek, Josef Kudrnovský, and Maciej Zwierzycki as well as support by FOM and the NEDO joint research program (NTDP-98). A.B. is supported by the Norwegian Research Council.