Nonsinusoidal current-phase relation in strongly ferromagnetic and moderately disordered SFS junctions

François Konschelle (1) , Jérôme Cayssol (1) , Alexandre I. Buzdin (1, 2)

1 CPMOH - Centre de physique moléculaire optique et hertzienne
2 IUF - Institut universitaire de France

We study the Josephson current in a junction comprising two superconductors linked by a strong ferromagnet in presence of impurities. We focus on a regime where the electron (and hole) motion is ballistic over the exchange length and diffusive on the scale of the weak link length. The first and the second harmonics of the current-phase relation are obtained for both two- and three dimensional ferromagnetic weak links. In the clean limit, the possibility of temperature-induced 0- transitions is demonstrated while the corresponding critical current versus temperature dependences are also studied.

Keywords: superconductor/ferromagnet/superconductor Josephson junction; Eilenberger equation; second harmonic; disorder; strong ferromagnet

Domains: Superconductivity [cond-mat.supr-con]; Mesoscopic Systems and Quantum Hall Effect [cond-mat.mes-hall]

François Konschelle, Jérôme Cayssol, Alexandre I. Buzdin. Nonsinusoidal current-phase relation in strongly ferromagnetic and moderately disordered SFS junctions. Physical Review B: Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (1998-2015), 2008, 78 (13), pp.134505. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevB.78.134505⟩. ⟨hal-00333836⟩