Publication Date:
2016-01-08
Description:
Nature Physics 12, 57 (2016). doi:10.1038/nphys3486 Authors: M. G. Flokstra, N. Satchell, J. Kim, G. Burnell, P. J. Curran, S. J. Bending, J. F. K. Cooper, C. J. Kinane, S. Langridge, A. Isidori, N. Pugach, M. Eschrig, H. Luetkens, A. Suter, T. Prokscha & S. L. Lee Superconducting spintronics has emerged in the past decade as a promising new field that seeks to open a new dimension for nanoelectronics by utilizing the internal spin structure of the superconducting Cooper pair as a new degree of freedom. Its basic building blocks are spin-triplet Cooper pairs with equally aligned spins, which are promoted by proximity of a conventional superconductor to a ferromagnetic material with inhomogeneous macroscopic magnetization. Using low-energy muon spin-rotation experiments we find an unanticipated effect, in contradiction with the existing theoretical models of superconductivity and ferromagnetism: the appearance of a magnetization in a thin layer of a non-magnetic metal (gold), separated from a ferromagnetic double layer by a 50-nm-thick superconducting layer of Nb. The effect can be controlled either by temperature or by using a magnetic field to control the state of the remote ferromagnetic elements, and may act as a basic building block for a new generation of quantum interference devices based on the spin of a Cooper pair.
Print ISSN:
1745-2473
Electronic ISSN:
1745-2481
Topics:
Physics
Permalink
