Stimulation of a Singlet Superconductivity in SFS Weak Links by Spin-Exchange Scattering of Cooper Pairs

A. V. Samokhvalov (1, 2) , R. I. Shekhter (3) , Alexandre I. Buzdin (4, 5)

1 Institute for Physics of Microstructures of the RAS
2 Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod
3 Department of Physics (Göthenburg)
4 IUF - Institut universitaire de France
5 LOMA - Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d'Aquitaine

Josephson junctions with a ferromagnetic metal weak link reveal a very strong decrease of the critical current compared to a normal metal weak link. We demonstrate that in the ballistic regime the presence of a small region with a non-collinear magnetization near the center of a ferromagnetic weak link restores the critical current inherent to the normal metal. The above effect can be stimulated by additional electrical bias of the magnetic gate which induces a local electron depletion of ferromagnetic barrier. The underlying physics of the effect is the interference phenomena due to the magnetic scattering of the Cooper pair, which reverses its total momentum in the ferromagnet and thus compensates the phase gain before and after the spin-reversed scattering. In contrast with the widely discussed triplet long ranged proximity effect we elucidate a new singlet long ranged proximity effect. This phenomenon opens a way to easily control the properties of SFS junctions and inversely to manipulate the magnetic moment via the Josephson current.

Keywords: spintronics; superconductinf properties and materials

Domains: Superconductivity [cond-mat.supr-con]

A. V. Samokhvalov, R. I. Shekhter, Alexandre I. Buzdin. Stimulation of a Singlet Superconductivity in SFS Weak Links by Spin-Exchange Scattering of Cooper Pairs. Scientific Reports, 2014, 4, pp.5671 (1-5). ⟨10.1038/srep05671⟩. ⟨hal-01064024⟩