Magnetic resistivity measurements in nickel films for CIW and CPW domain geometries

We report magnetoresistance measurements on Ni films with two stripe domain orientations. Measurements were taken for both current parallel to the domain walls (CIW) and current perpendicular to the domain walls (CPW). We observe a negative magnetoresistance for the field applied perpendicular to the plane. For CIW, we observe an added resistance, ΔR_CIW/R(2 T), that vanishes after an applied field removes the ordered domains. The ΔR_CPW/R(2 T) is comparable to the ΔR/R(2 T) for the disordered domain structure observed after the field is removed. We find ΔR_CPW/ΔR_CIW is less than one, which is not consistent with previous work.