Giant magnetoanisotropy in the Josephson effect and switching of staggered order in antiferromagnets

TL;DR

This paper predicts that the Josephson current in antiferromagnetic junctions can be vastly modulated by rotating the Neel order parameter due to spin-orbit coupling, enabling control over supercurrent and magnetic order.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism for controlling Josephson current and Neel vector orientation in antiferromagnets via spin-orbit coupling and phase biasing.

Findings

Josephson current amplitude varies by orders of magnitude with Neel order rotation.

Phase biasing induces magnetization dynamics that switch the Neel vector.

Antiferromagnetic Josephson junctions offer large tunability and phase control.

Abstract

We predict that the amplitude of the Josephson current through an antiferromagnetic weak link changes by several orders of magnitude upon rotation of the N\'eel order parameter characterizing the staggered magnetic order. This occurs due the presence of spin-orbit coupling arising from structural inversion asymmetry which makes the band gap in the antiferromagnet highly sensitive to the staggered order parameter direction. We also demonstrate that when phase-biasing the junction, magnetization dynamics is induced which switches the direction of the N\'eel vector in the antiferromagnet. These results reveal an interesting versatility of antiferromagnetic Josephson junctions as they offer both a large tunability of the supercurrent magnitude via the staggerered magnetization and phase-coherent control over the N\'eel order parameter.