Spin currents in superconductors.pdf

a r X i v : c o n d - m a t / 0 4 0 6 4 8 9 v 1 [ c o n d - m a t .s u p r - c o n ] 2 2 J u n 2 0 0 4 Spin currents in superconductors J. E. Hirsch Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0319 (Dated: February 2, 2008) It is argued that experiments on rotating superconductors provide evidence for the existence of macroscopic spin currents in superconductors in the absence of applied external fields. Furthermore it is shown that the model of hole superconductivity predicts the existence of such currents in all superconductors. In addition it is pointed out that spin currents are required within a related macroscopic (London-like) electrodynamic description of superconductors recently proposed. The spin current arises through an intrinsic spin Hall effect when negative charge is expelled from the interior of the metal upon the transition to the superconducting state. PACS numbers: There is currently great interest in the study of the role of the electron spin degree of freedom in transport in solids[1]. In particular the possibility of generating a pure spin current in the absence of charge currents and magnetization has been suggested[2, 3, 4], and it was re- cently reported that it may have been achieved by optical techniques[5]. Another area of recent interest is the possible exis- tence of novel states of matter that involve spontaneous currents, induced by electronic correlations between electrons. Early work on superconductivity predicted the existence of such macroscopic charge currents[6], but this was proven impossible by a so-called ’Bloch’s theorem’[7]. More recently, states with local charge cur- rents that spontaneously break time reversal invariance have been proposed to describe high temperature cuprate superconductors[8, 9]. Combining the above two concepts, we proposed sev- eral years ago that the low temperature phase of cer- tain metals and in particular Chromium may be a novel state of matter induced b