4 research outputs found
Using superconductivity to control magnetism: a facet of superconducting spintronics
Magnets are used in electronics to store and read information. A magnetic
moment is rotated to a desired direction, so that information can later be
retrieved by reading this orientation. Controlling the moment via electric
currents causes resistive losses and heating, a major bottleneck in advancing
computing technologies. Superconducting spintronics can resolve this using the
unique features of superconductors.Comment: Feature in Europhysics News (4 pages
Inverse spin-Hall effect and spin-swapping in spin-split superconductors
When a spin-splitting field is introduced to a thin film superconductor, the
spin currents polarized along the field couples to energy currents that can
only decay via inelastic scattering. We study spin and energy injection into
such a superconductor where spin-orbit impurity scattering yields inverse
spin-Hall and spin-swapping currents. We show that the combined presence of a
spin-splitting field, superconductivity, and inelastic scattering gives rise to
a renormalization of the spin-Hall and spin-swap angles. In addition to an
enhancement of the ordinary inverse spin-Hall effect, spin-splitting gives rise
to unique inverse spin-Hall and spin-swapping signals five orders of magnitude
stronger than the ordinary inverse spin-Hall signal. These can be completely
controlled by the orientation of the spin-splitting field, resulting in a
long-range charge and spin accumulations detectable much further from the
injector than in the normal-state. Our results demonstrate that superconductors
provide tunable inverse spin-Hall and spin-swapping signals with high detection
sensitivity.Comment: 6 + 9 pages, 3 figure
Generation of spin-triplet Cooper pairs via a canted antiferromagnet
Spinful triplet Cooper pairs can be generated from their singlet counterparts
available in a conventional superconductor (S) using two or more noncollinear
magnetic moments, typically contributed by different magnets in a multilayered
heterostructure. Here, we theoretically demonstrate that an S interfaced with a
canted antiferromagnet (AF) harbors spinful triplet Cooper pairs capitalizing
on the intrinsic noncollinearity between the two AF sublattice magnetizations.
As the AF canting can be controlled by an applied field, our work proposes a
simple bilayer structure that admits controllable generation of spin-triplet
Cooper pairs. Employing the Bogoliubov-de Gennes framework, we delineate the
spatial dependence of the spin-triplet correlations. We further evaluate the
superconducting critical temperature as a function of the AF canting, which
provides one experimental observable associated with the emergence of these
triplet correlations.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figure
Complete suppression and N\'eel triplets-mediated exchange in antiferromagnet-superconductor-antiferromagnet trilayers
An antiferromagnetic insulator (AFI) bearing a compensated interface to an
adjacent conventional superconductor (S) has recently been predicted to
generate N\'eel triplet Cooper pairs, whose amplitude alternates sign in space.
Here, we theoretically demonstrate that such N\'eel triplets enable control of
the superconducting critical temperature in an S layer via the angle between
the N\'eel vectors of two enclosing AFI layers. This angle dependence changes
sign with the number of S monolayers providing a distinct signature of the
N\'eel triplets. Furthermore, we show that the latter mediate a similarly
distinct exchange interaction between the two AFIs' N\'eel vectors.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure