Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 84: Focus Session: Nanoscopic Superconducting Heterostructures

TT 84.9: Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2015, 13:00–13:15, H 0104

Controllable transfer of magnetism in superconducting spin-valve structures — •Matthias Eschrig — Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

During the past 15 years a new field has emerged, which combines superconductivity and spintronics, with the goal to pave a way for new types of devices for applications combining the virtues of both, namely quantum coherence and interference on one side, and spin-selectivity and spin magnetism on the other. The building block of this new “superspintronics” are spin-triplet Cooper pairs, which are generated at the interface between a conventional superconducting and a ferromagnetic material. Non-collinear magnetic inhomogeneity mixes triplet pairs among each other, thus creating long-ranged equal-spin Cooper pairs in the ferromagnet, and non-coplanar inhomogeneity introduces geometric phases giving rise to unusual current phase relations. We discuss recent experiments [1] on superconducting spin-valve structures reporting a controllable transfer of magnetism via equal-spin Cooper pairs. We present theoretical models for for such an effect and discuss its implications for applications.

This work is supported by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC Grant No. EP/J010618/1).

[1] M.G. Flokstra, N. Satchell, J. Kim, G. Burnell, S.J. Bending, P.J. Curran, S. Langridge, C.J. Kinane, J.F.K. Cooper, M. Eschrig, A. Isidori, N. Pugach, H. Luetkens, T. Prokscha, S. L. Lee, unpublished.