English

Tunneling conductance of graphene ferromagnet-insulator-superconductor junctions

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2015-05-14 v1

Abstract

We study the transport properties of a graphene ferromagnet-insulator superconductor (FIS) junction within the Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk formalism by solving spin-polarized Dirac-Bogoliubov-de-Gennes equation. We find that the retro and specular Andreev reflections in the graphene FIS junction are drastically modified in the presence of exchange interaction and that the spin-polarization (PTP_T) of tunneling current can be tuned from the positive to negative value by bias voltage (VV). In the thin-barrier limit, the conductance GG of a graphene FIS junction oscillates as a function of barrier strength χ\chi. Both the amplitude and phase of the conductance oscillation varies with the exchange energy EexE_{ex}. For Eex<EFE_{ex}<E_F (Fermi energy), the amplitude of oscillation decreases with EexE_{ex}. For Eexc>Eex>EFE_{ex}^{c}>E_{ex}>E_F, the amplitude of oscillation increases with EexE_{ex}, where Eexc=2EF+U0E_{ex}^{c}=2E_{F}+U_{0} (U0U_{0} is the applied electrostatic potential on the superconducting segment of the junction). For Eex>EexcE_{ex} > E_{ex}^{c}, the amplitude of oscillation decreases with EexE_{ex} again. Interestingly, a universal phase difference of π/2\pi/2 in χ\chi exists between the GχG-\chi curves for Eex>EFE_{ex}>E_F and Eex<EFE_{ex}<E_F. Finally, we find that the transitions between retro and specular Andreev reflections occur at eV=EFEexeV=|E_{F}-E_{ex}| and eV=Eex+EFeV=E_{ex}+E_{F}, and hence the singular behavior of the conductance near these bias voltages results from the difference in transport properties between specular and retro Andreev reflections.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0912.4567,
  title  = {Tunneling conductance of graphene ferromagnet-insulator-superconductor junctions},
  author = {Ya-Fen Hsu and Guang-Yu Guo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0912.4567},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in Physical Review B