Effects of spin-orbit interaction on superconductor-ferromagnet heterostructures: spontaneous electric and spin surface currents

Abstract

We find proximity-induced spontaneous spin and electric surface currents, at all temperatures below the superconducting T_c, in an isotropic s-wave superconductor deposited with a thin ferromagnetic metal layer with spin-orbit interaction. The currents are carried by Andreev surface states and generated as a joint effect of the spin-orbit interaction and the exchange field. The background spin current arises in the thin layer due to different local spin polarizations of electrons and holes, which have almost opposite velocities in each of the surface states. The spontaneous surface electric current in the superconductor originates in asymmetry of Andreev states with respect to sign reversal of the momentum component parallel to the surface. Conditions for electric and spin currents to show up in the system, significantly differ from each other.

5 pages

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Cited by in corpus (21)

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• Bound states at the interface between antiferromagnets and superconductors
• Tunable Anomalous Andreev Reflection and Triplet Pairings in Spin Orbit Coupled Graphene
• Spontaneous Edge Accumulation of Spin Currents in Finite-Size Two-Dimensional Diffusive Spin-Orbit Coupled SFS Heterostructures
• Spontaneous supercurrent and $\varphi$0 phase shift parallel to magnetized topological insulator interfaces
• Long-Range Spin-Triplet Correlations and Edge Spin Currents in Diffusive Spin-Orbit Coupled SNS Hybrids with a Single Spin-Active Interface
• Magnetoelectric effects in Josephson junctions
• Odd triplet superconductivity induced by the moving condensate
• Chirality selective spin interactions mediated by the superconducting current
• Superconducting triplet rim currents in a spin-textured ferromagnetic disk
• Extrinsic Spin-Charge Coupling in Diffusive Superconducting Systems
• Thermally induced spin-transfer torques in superconductor/ferromagnet bilayers
• Phase transitions in superconductor/ferromagnet bilayer driven by spontaneous supercurrents
• Spin phase regulated spin Josephson supercurrent in topological superconductor
• Controlling spin supercurrents via nonequilibrium spin injection
• Magnetoelectric effects in superconductor/ferromagnet bilayers
• Reconstruction of the DOS at the end of a S/F bilayer
• The influence of anisotropic Rashba spin-orbit coupling on current-induced spin polarization in graphene
• Static and dynamic properties of Josephson weak links with singlet and triplet coupling
• Hybrid collective excitations in topological superconductor/ferromagnetic insulator heterostructures