Proximity effect in superconductor/conical magnet heterostructures

Abstract

The presence of a spin-flip potential at the interface between a superconductor and a ferromagnetic metal allows for the generation of equal-spin spin-triplet Cooper pairs. These Cooper pairs are compatible with the exchange interaction within the ferromagnetic region and hence allow for the long-range proximity effect through a ferromagnet or half-metal. One suitable spin-flip potential is provided by incorporating the conical magnet Holmium (Ho) into the interface. The conical magnetic structure is characterised by an opening angle $\alpha$ with respect to the crystal $c$-axis and a turning (or pitch) angle $\beta$ measuring the rotation of magnetisation with respect to the adjacent layers. Here, we present results showing the influence of conical magnet interface layers with varying $\alpha$ and $\beta$ on the efficiency of the generation of equal-spin spin-triplet pairing. The results are obtained by self-consistent solutions of the microscopic Bogoliubov$-$de Gennes equations in the clean limit within a tight-binding model of the heterostructure. In particular, the dependence of unequal-spin and equal-spin spin-triplet pairing correlations on the conical magnetic angles $\alpha$ and $\beta$ are discussed in detail.

12 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Proximity effects in superconductor-ferromagnet heterostructures
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• Critical current of a Josephson junction containing a conical magnet
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• Proximity effect in clean strong/weak/strong superconducting tri-layers
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• Proximity Effects in Conical-Ferromagnet/Superconductor bilayers
• Proximity effect in superconductor/conical magnet/ferromagnet heterostructures

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Transport in two-dimensional topological materials: recent developments in experiment and theory
• Magnetoelectric Andreev effect due to proximity-induced non-unitary triplet superconductivity in helical metals
• Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov state in spin-orbit-coupled superconductors
• Classification of magnetic inhomogeneities and $0-\pi$ transitions in superconducting-magnetic hybrid structures
• Spin-flipping with Holmium: Case study of proximity effect in superconductor/ferromagnet/superconductor heterostructures
• Influence of Magnetic Order on Proximity-Induced Superconductivity in Mn Layers on Nb(110) from First Principles
• Phase separation and proximity effects in itinerant ferromagnet-superconductor heterostructures