Striking properties of Superconductor/Ferromagnet structures with spin-dependent scattering

Abstract

We investigate Superconductor/Ferromagnet (S/F) hybrid structures in the dirty limit, described by the Usadel equations. More precisely, the oscillations of the critical temperature and critical current with the thickness of the ferromagnetic layers are studied. We show that spin-flip and spin-orbit scattering lead to the decrease of the decay length and the increase of the oscillations period. The critical current decay is more sensitive to these pair-breaking mechanisms than that of the critical temperature. These two scattering mechanisms should be taken into account to get a better agreement between experimental results and theoretical description. We also study the influence of the interface transparency on the properties of S/F structures.

28 pages, 9 figures accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B; reference added

References in corpus (2)

• Half-integer Shapiro steps at the 0-pi crossover of a ferromagnetic Josephson junction
• Superharmonic Josephson relation at 0-/$\pi$-junction transition

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Josephson current in a superconductor-ferromagnet junction with two non-collinear magnetic domains
• The role of interface transparency and spin-dependent scattering in diffusive ferromagnet/superconductor heterostructures
• Josephson current in a superconductor -- ferromagnet -- superconductor junction with in-plane ferromagnetic domains
• Theory of Josephson effect in unconventional superconducting junctions with diffusive barriers
• Scattering by magnetic and spin-orbit impurities and the Josephson current in superconductor-ferromagnet-superconductor junctions
• Role of magnetic scattering in 0-pi transitions in a superconductor/ferromagnetic metal/superconductor junction
• Density of states in SF bilayers with arbitrary strength of magnetic scattering
• Superconducting/ferromagnetic diffusive bilayer with a spin-active interface: a numerical study
• Spin-flip scattering and non-ideal interfaces in dirty ferromagnet/superconductor junctions
• 0-pi transition in SFS junctions with strongly spin-dependent scattering