Superconducting Spintronics with Magnetic Domain Walls

Abstract

The recent experimental demonstration of spin-polarized supercurrents offer a venue for establishment of a superconducting analogue to conventional spintronics. Whereas domain wall motion in purely magnetic structures is a well-studied topic, it is not clear how domain wall dynamics may influence superconductivity and if some functional property can be harnessed from such a scenario. Here, we demonstrate that domain wall motion in superconducting systems offers a unique way of controlling the quantum state of the superconductor. Considering both the diffusive and ballistic limits, we show that moving the domain wall to different locations in a Josephson junction will change the quantum ground state from being in a 0 state to a $\pi$ state. Remarkably, we also show that domain wall motion can be used to turn on and off superconductivity: the position of the domain wall determines the critical temperature $T_c$ and thus if the system is in a resistive state or not, causing even a quantum phase transition between the dissipationless and normal state at $T=0$. In this way, one achieves dynamical control over the superconducting state within a single sample by utilizing magnetic domain wall motion.

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Cited by in corpus (19)

• Superconducting Spintronics
• Spin-polarized supercurrents for spintronics: a review of current progress
• Reversible control of spin-polarised supercurrents in ferromagnetic Josephson junctions
• Charge and Spin Currents in Ferromagnetic Josephson junctions
• Josephson Currents and Spin Transfer Torques in Ballistic SFSFS Nanojunctions
• Josephson effect through magnetic skyrmion
• Ultrasensitive interplay between ferromagnetism and superconductivity in NbGd composite thin films
• Magnetization induced by odd-frequency spin-triplet Cooper pairs in a Josephson junction with metallic trilayers
• Bifurcation structure and chaos in nanomagnet coupled to Josephson junction
• Quasiparticle density of states and triplet correlations in superconductor/ferromagnetic-insulator structures across a sharp domain wall
• Domain wall induced modulation of low field H-T phase diagram in patterned superconductor-ferromagnet stripes
• Charge and Spin Supercurrents in Magnetic Josephson Junctions with Spin Filters and Domain Walls
• Oscillations of the Critical Temperature in a (Fe/Cr/Fe)/V/Fe Heterostructure
• Theory of a Weak-Link Superconductor-Ferromagnet Josephson Structure
• Static and dynamic properties of Josephson weak links with singlet and triplet coupling
• Microwave induced tunable subharmonic steps in superconductor-ferromagnet-superconductor Josephson junction
• Signatures of Long-Range Spin-Triplet Component in Andreev Interferometer
• Study of magnetization reversal in Neel and Bloch regime of Ni and Py stripes using Kerr microscopy
• Realistic indirect spin-interactions between magnetic impurities on a metallic Pb(110) surface