巨磁电阻引发硬盘的高速发展 ———2007年诺贝尔物理学奖简介

2007年诺贝尔物理学奖授予巨磁电阻（Giant Magnetoresistance）效应的发现者。他们是法国物理学家阿尔贝•费尔(Albert Fert)和德国物理学家彼得•格伦贝格（Peter Grünberg）。在探索基本磁性问题（人工结构中的交换作用）过程中发现了巨磁电阻现象。随后，巨磁电阻效应和金属多层薄膜被用于读取计算机硬盘数据。近十年来的开发，使得计算机硬盘的密度和容量提高了几百倍。这个发现使人们对自旋极化电子输运过程产生特别的兴趣，并导致自旋电子学（Spintronics）的创立。

Giant Magnetoresistance Leading to a Giant Leap of the Hard Disk Drive: 2007 's Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Fert and Peter Grfinberg for the discovery of giant magnetoresist- ance(GMR).GMR is observed in artificial thin-film materials com- posed of alternate ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic layers after mak- ing an effort to explore the indirect exchange interaction in these systems.Applications of GMR have revolutionized techniques for retrieving data from hard disk drive.For the past ten years,giant magnetoresistance have led to a giant leap of the hard disk drive. The discovery in 1988 of the giant magnetoresistive effect led up to the beginning of the new,spin-based electronics i.e.spintronics. Until recently,the spin of the electron was ignored in mainstream charge-based electronics.However,it might also be exploited to gain new control over data storage and processing.