Proximity effect and its enhancement by ferromagnetism in high-temperature superconductor-ferromagnet structures

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in high-temperature superconductor-ferromagnet heterostructures, a domain wall in the ferromagnet enhances the proximity effect by generating odd-frequency triplet pairing, allowing superconductivity to penetrate deeper.

Contribution

It reveals that domain walls in ferromagnets induce odd-frequency triplet pairing, significantly enhancing the proximity effect in high-temperature superconductor-ferromagnet structures.

Findings

Proximity effect is enhanced by inhomogeneous exchange fields.

Superconductivity penetrates ferromagnets over larger distances near domain walls.

Odd-frequency triplet s-wave component is generated due to domain walls.

Abstract

We consider a bi-layer consisting of a $d-$wave layerd superconductor and diffusive ferromagnet with a domain wall (DW). The $c-$axis in the superconductor and DW in the ferromagnet are assumed to be perpendicular to the interface. We demonstrate that in such a heterostructure the inhomogeneous exchange field enhances the proximity effect. It is shown that, whereas in the absence of the exchange field the $d-$wave condensate decays in the normal metal on the mean free path $l$, the superconductivity penetrates the ferromagnet along the DW over much larger distances. This happens because the presence of DW results in a generation of an odd frequency triplet s-wave component of the condensate. The phenomenon discovered here may help to explain a recent experiment on high temperature superconductor-ferromagnet bi-lyers.