We consider the Josephson effect through a thin spin-orbit coupled layer in the presence of an exchange field $\mathit{h}$ and discover a set of supercurrent vortices appearing in the system which can be controllably moved around in the system by varying either the direction of $\mathit{h}$, the strength $\left|\mathit{h}\right|$, the spin-orbit coupling magnitude $\alpha$ via a gate voltage, or the phase difference. We refer to this phenomenon as a supercurrent vortex pinball effect and show that its origin is the spin polarization of the triplet Cooper pairs induced in the system. The supercurrent vortices are shown to arise from what resembles a Cooper pair-induced inverse Edelstein effect.

• Received 10 January 2017
• Revised 22 June 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.064508