Enhanced spin-triplet pairing in magnetic junctions with s-wave superconductors
Abstract
A common path to superconducting spintronics, Majorana fermions, and topologically-protected quantum computing relies on spin-triplet superconductivity. While naturally occurring spin-triplet pairing is elusive and even common spin-triplet candidates, such as SrRuO, support alternative explanations, proximity effects in heterostructures can overcome these limitations. It is expected that robust spin-triplet superconductivity in magnetic junctions should rely on highly spin-polarized magnets or complex magnetic multilayers. Instead, we predict that the interplay of interfacial spin-orbit coupling and the barrier strength in simple magnetic junctions, with only a small spin polarization and s-wave superconductors, can lead to nearly complete spin-triplet superconducting proximity effects. This peculiar behavior arises from an effective perfect transparency: interfacial spin-orbit coupling counteracts the native potential barrier for states of a given spin and wave vector. We show that the enhanced spin-triplet regime is characterized by a huge increase in conductance magnetoanisotropy, orders of magnitude larger than in the normal state.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1904.10773,
title = {Enhanced spin-triplet pairing in magnetic junctions with s-wave superconductors},
author = {Thomas Vezin and Chenghao Shen and Jong E. Han and Igor Žutić},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.10773},
year = {2020}
}