Striking properties of Superconductor/Ferromagnet structures with spin-dependent scattering

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how spin-dependent scattering affects the properties of superconductor/ferromagnet structures, revealing that spin-flip and spin-orbit interactions significantly influence critical temperature and current oscillations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical study of the impact of spin-flip and spin-orbit scattering on S/F hybrid structures using the Usadel equations, enhancing understanding of experimental observations.

Findings

Spin-flip and spin-orbit scattering decrease decay length and increase oscillation period.

Critical current decay is more affected by pair-breaking mechanisms than critical temperature.

Interface transparency influences the properties of S/F structures.

Abstract

We investigate Superconductor/Ferromagnet (S/F) hybrid structures in the dirty limit, described by the Usadel equations. More precisely, the oscillations of the critical temperature and critical current with the thickness of the ferromagnetic layers are studied. We show that spin-flip and spin-orbit scattering lead to the decrease of the decay length and the increase of the oscillations period. The critical current decay is more sensitive to these pair-breaking mechanisms than that of the critical temperature. These two scattering mechanisms should be taken into account to get a better agreement between experimental results and theoretical description. We also study the influence of the interface transparency on the properties of S/F structures.