English

Superconductivity at metal-antiferromagnetic insulator interfaces

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2019-10-01 v1

Abstract

Magnons in antiferromagnetic insulators couple strongly to conduction electrons in adjacent metals. We show that this interfacial tie can lead to superconductivity in a tri-layer consisting of a metal sandwiched between two antiferromagnetic insulators. The critical temperature is closely related to the magnon gap, which can be in the THz range. We estimate the critical temperature in MnF2_2-Au-MnF2_2 to be on the order of 1 K. The Umklapp scattering at metal-antiferromagnet interfaces leads to a d-wave superconductive pairing, in contrast to the p-wave superconductivity mediated by magnons in ferromagnets.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1904.00233,
  title  = {Superconductivity at metal-antiferromagnetic insulator interfaces},
  author = {Eirik Løhaugen Fjærbu and Niklas Rohling and Arne Brataas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.00233},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

8 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T08:24:03.368Z