Anomalous transport in normal-superconducting and ferromagnetic-superconducting nanostructures

Abstract

We have calculated the temperature dependence of the conductance variation ($\delta S(T)$) of mesoscopic superconductor normal metal(S/N) structures, in the diffusive regime, analysing both weak and strong proximity effects. We show that in the case of a weak proximity effect there are two peaks in the dependence of $\delta S(T)$ on temperature. One of them (known from previous studies) corresponds to a temperature $T_1$ of order of the Thouless energy (${\epsilon }_{Th}$), and another, newly predicted maximum, occurs at a temperature $T_2$ where the energy gap in the superconductor $\Delta (T_2)$ is of order ${\epsilon }_{Th}$. In the limit $L_{\varphi }<L$ the temperature $T_1$ is determined by $D\hslash /L_{\varphi }^2$ ($L_{\varphi }$ is the phase breaking length), and not ${\epsilon }_{Th}$. We have also calculated the voltage dependence $\delta S(V)$ for a S/F structure (F is a ferromagnet) and predict non-monotonic behaviour at voltages of order the Zeeman splitting.

6 figures. Submitted to PRB Rapid comm