Superconducting spintronics

The interaction between superconducting and spin-polarized orders has recently emerged as a major research field following a series of fundamental breakthroughs in charge transport in superconductor-ferromagnet heterodevices which promise new device functionality. Traditional studies which combine spintronics and superconductivity have mainly focused on the injection of spin-polarized quasiparticles into superconducting materials. However, a complete synergy between superconducting and magnetic orders turns out to be possible through the creation of spin-triplet Cooper pairs which are generated at carefully engineered superconductor interfaces with ferromagnetic materials. Currently, there is intense activity focused on identifying materials combinations which merge superconductivity and spintronics in order to enhance device functionality and performance. The results look promising: it has been shown, for example, that superconducting order can greatly enhance central effects in spintronics such as spin injection and magnetoresistance. Here, we review the experimental and theoretical advances in this field and provide an outlook for upcoming challenges related to the new concept of superconducting spintronics.J.L. was supported by the Research Council of Norway, Grants No. 205591 and 216700. J.W.A.R. was supported by the UK Royal Society and the Leverhulme Trust through an International Network Grant (IN-2013-033).This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v11/n4/full/nphys3242.html

Remotely induced magnetism in a normal metal using a superconducting spin-valve

Superconducting spintronics has emerged in the past decade as a promising new field that seeks to open a new dimension for nanoelectronics by utilizing the internal spin structure of the superconducting Cooper pair as a new degree of freedom1, 2. Its basic building blocks are spin-triplet Cooper pairs with equally aligned spins, which are promoted by proximity of a conventional superconductor to a ferromagnetic material with inhomogeneous macroscopic magnetization3. Using low-energy muon spin-rotation experiments we find an unanticipated effect, in contradiction with the existing theoretical models of superconductivity and ferromagnetism: the appearance of a magnetization in a thin layer of a non-magnetic metal (gold), separated from a ferromagnetic double layer by a 50-nm-thick superconducting layer of Nb. The effect can be controlled either by temperature or by using a magnetic field to control the state of the remote ferromagnetic elements, and may act as a basic building block for a new generation of quantum interference devices based on the spin of a Cooper pair

Proton source size measurements in the eA -\u3e e(\u27)ppX reaction

Two-proton correlations at small relative momentum q were studied in the eA(3He,4He,C,Fe)--\u3ee(\u27)ppX reaction at E(0)=4.46 GeV using the CLAS detector at Jefferson Lab. The enhancement of the correlation function at small q was found to be in accordance with theoretical expectations. Sizes of the emission region were extracted, and proved to be dependent on A and on the proton momentum. The size of the two-proton emission region for He was measured in eA reactions for the first time

Measurement of inclusive spin structure functions of the deuteron - art. no. 0452XX

We report the results of a new measurement of spin structure functions of the deuteron in the region of moderate momentum transfer [Q(2)=0.27-1.3 (GeV/c)(2)] and final hadronic state mass in the nucleon resonance region (W=1.08-2.0 GeV). We scattered a 2.5 GeV polarized continuous electron beam at Jefferson Lab off a dynamically polarized cryogenic solid state target ((ND3)-N-15) and detected the scattered electrons with the CEBAF large acceptance spectrometer. From our data, we extract the longitudinal double spin asymmetry A(parallel toparallel to) and the spin structure function g(1)(d). Our data are generally in reasonable agreement with existing data from SLAC where they overlap, and they represent a substantial improvement in statistical precision. We compare our results with expectations for resonance asymmetries and extrapolated deep inelastic scaling results. Finally, we evaluate the first moment of the structure function g(1)(d) and study its approach to both the deep inelastic limit at large Q(2) and to the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn sum rule at the real photon limit (Q(2)-->0). We find that the first moment varies rapidly in the Q(2) range of our experiment and crosses zero at Q(2) between 0.5 and 0.8 (GeV/c)(2), indicating the importance of the Delta resonance at these momentum transfers