Ferromagnet-superconductor proximity effect The clean limit.pdfVIP

a r X i v : c o n d - m a t / 0 4 0 9 5 4 4 v 3 [ c o n d - m a t .s u p r - c o n ] 2 5 M a r 2 0 0 5 Ferromagnet-superconductor proximity effect: The clean limit Milos? Boz?ovic? and Zoran Radovic? Department of Physics, University of Belgrade, P.O. Box 368, 11001 Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro We study theoretically the influence of ferromagnetic metals on a superconducting film in the clean limit. Using a self-consistent solution of the Bogoliubov–de Gennes equation for a ferromagnet- superconductor-ferromagnet double junction we calculate the pair potential and conductance spectra as a function of the superconducting layer thickness d for different strengths of ferromagnets and interface transparencies. We find that the pair potential and the critical temperature are weakly perturbed by the exchange interaction and do not drop to zero for any finite d. On the other hand, for thin superconducting films charge transport is spin polarized and exhibits a significant dependence on the ferromagnetic strength and magnetization alignment. I. INTRODUCTION Rapid advancement of nanofabrication technology in the past decade has reinvigorated interest in under- standing the effects inherent to clean superconducting heterostructures. Apart from potential device applica- tions, particularly in quantum information storage and processing,1 variety of phenomena makes systems con- sisting of superconductor sandwiched between two ferro- magnets interesting for both experimental and theoret- ical investigation (see, for example, refs.2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20). The interplay of ferromag- netism and superconductivity results in characteristic proximity effects near the contacts between two metals: the Andreev reflection is suppressed in the presence of a ferromagnet;21 conversely, the superconducting corre- lations, described via the pair amplitude, extend in the ferromagnetic material in an oscillatory way.10 The proximity effect in heterostructu