Hysteretic magnetic pinning and reversible resistance switching in high-temperature superconductor/ferromagnet multilayers

We study a high-critical temperature superconducting (YBa2Cu3O7-delta)/ferromagnetic (Co/Pt multilayer) hybrid that exhibits resistance switching driven by the magnetic history: depending on the direction of the external field, a pronounced decrease or increase of the mixed-state resistance is observed as magnetization reversal occurs within the Co/Pt multilayer. We demonstrate that stray magnetic fields cause these effects via (i) creation of vortices/antivortices and (ii) magnetostatic pinning of vortices that are induced by the external field.