  In-situ, device level measurement of thermal mag-noise spectral linewidths in
60nm diameter CPP-GMR spin-valve stacks of IrMn/ref/Cu/free, with reference and
free layer of similar CoFe/CoFeGe alloy, are used to simultaneously determine
the intrinsic Gilbert damping for both magnetic layers. It is shown that
careful alignment at a "magic-angle" between free and reference layer static
equilibrium magnetization can allow direct measurement of the broadband
intrinsic thermal spectra in the virtual absence of spin-torque effects which
otherwise grossly distort the spectral line shapes and require linewidth
extrapolations to zero current (which are nonetheless also shown to agree well
with the direct method). The experimental magic-angle spectra are shown to be
in good qualitative and quantitative agreement with both macrospin calculations
and micromagnetic eigenmode analysis. Despite similar composition and
thickness, it is repeatedly found that the IrMn exchange pinned reference layer
has ten times larger intrinsic Gilbert damping (alpha ~ 0.1) than that of the
free-layer (alpha ~ 0.01). It is argued that the large reference layer damping
results from strong, off -resonant coupling to to lossy modes of an IrMn/ref
couple, rather than commonly invoked two-magnon processes.
