Determination of the elastic scattering length of carriers in point contacts

The resistance of a bismuth point contact has been studied as a function of the magnetic field. The results are in good agreement with theoretical calculations for the magnetoresistance of dirty point contacts and make it possible to determine the electron elastic scattering length li in the region of the contact. The values of li obtained from the quadratic and linear segments of the dependence R(H) coincide and amount to 10−4−10−5 cm.