6 research outputs found
Andreev conductance of a domain wall
At low temperatures, the transport through a superconductor-ferromagnet
tunnel interface is due to tunneling of electrons in pairs. Exchange field of a
monodomain ferromagnet aligns electron spins and suppresses the two electron
tunneling. The presence of the domain walls at the SF interface strongly
enhances the subgap current. The Andreev conductance is proven to be
proportional to the total length of domain walls at the SF interface.Comment: 4 pages and 1 figur
Spontaneous Spin Polarized Currents in Superconductor-Ferromagnetic Metal Heterostructures
We study a simple microscopic model for thin, ferromagnetic, metallic layers
on semi-infinite bulk superconductor. We find that for certain values of the
exchange spliting, on the ferromagnetic side, the ground states of such
structures feature spontaneously induced spin polarized currents. Using a
mean-field theory, which is selfconsistent with respect to the pairing
amplitude , spin polarization and the spontaneous current
, we show that not only there are Andreev bound states in the
ferromagnet but when their energies are near zero they support
spontaneous currents parallel to the ferromagnetic-superconducting interface.
Moreover, we demonstrate that the spin-polarization of these currents depends
sensitively on the band filling.Comment: 4 pages, 5 Postscript figures (included
Quasiclassical description of transport through superconducting contacts
We present a theoretical study of transport properties through
superconducting contacts based on a new formulation of boundary conditions that
mimics interfaces for the quasiclassical theory of superconductivity. These
boundary conditions are based on a description of an interface in terms of a
simple Hamiltonian. We show how this Hamiltonian description is incorporated
into quasiclassical theory via a T-matrix equation by integrating out
irrelevant energy scales right at the onset. The resulting boundary conditions
reproduce results obtained by conventional quasiclassical boundary conditions,
or by boundary conditions based on the scattering approach. This formalism is
well suited for the analysis of magnetically active interfaces as well as for
calculating time-dependent properties such as the current-voltage
characteristics or as current fluctuations in junctions with arbitrary
transmission and bias voltage. This approach is illustrated with the
calculation of Josephson currents through a variety of superconducting
junctions ranging from conventional to d-wave superconductors, and to the
analysis of supercurrent through a ferromagnetic nanoparticle. The calculation
of the current-voltage characteristics and of noise is applied to the case of a
contact between two d-wave superconductors. In particular, we discuss the use
of shot noise for the measurement of charge transferred in a multiple Andreev
reflection in d-wave superconductors