We have measured spin-triplet supercurrent in Josephson junctions of the form S/F'/F/F'/S, where S is superconducting Nb, F' is a thin Ni layer with in-plane magnetization, and F is a Ni/[Co/Ni]n multilayer with out-of-plane magnetization. The supercurrent in these junctions decays very slowly with F-layer thickness, and is much larger than in similar junctions not containing the two F' layers. Those two features are the characteristic signatures of spin-triplet supercurrent, which is maximized by the orthogonality of the magnetizations in the F and F' layers. Magnetic measurements confirm the out-of-plane anisotropy of the Co/Ni multilayers. These samples have their critical current optimized in the as-prepared state, which will be useful for future applications.
@article{arxiv.1208.3118,
title = {Spin Triplet Supercurrent in Co/Ni Multilayer Josephson Junctions with Perpendicular Anisotropy},
author = {E. C. Gingrich and P. Quarterman and Y. Wang and R. Loloee and W. P. Pratt and N. O. Birge},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1208.3118},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
4 pages, 4 figures, formatted in RevTeX version 4. Submitted to Physical Review B on August 13th, 2012