English

Sign reversal of ac Josephson current in a ferromagnetic Josephson junction

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2009-11-13 v2 Superconductivity

Abstract

The ac Josephson effect in a ferromagnetic Josephson junction, which is composed of two superconductors separated by a ferromagnetic metal (FM), is studied by a tunneling Hamiltonian and Green's function method. We obtain two types of superconducting phase dependent current, i.e., Josephson current and quasiparticle-pair-interference current (QPIC). These currents change their signs with thickness of the FM layer due to the 0-π\pi transition characteristic to the ferromagnetic Josephson junction. As a function of applied voltage, the Josephson critical current shows a logarithmic divergence called the Riedel peak at the gap voltage, while the QPIC shows a discontinuous jump. The Riedel peak reverses due to the 0-π\pi transition and disappears near the 0-π\pi transition point. The discontinuous jump in the QPIC also represents similar behaviors to the Riedel peak. These results are in contrast to the conventional ones.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0809.1470,
  title  = {Sign reversal of ac Josephson current in a ferromagnetic Josephson junction},
  author = {S. Hikino and M. Mori and S. Takahashi and S. Maekawa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0809.1470},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

9 pages, 6 figures