2000/08/24 by V. V. Ryazanov, V. A. Oboznov, A. Yu. Rusanov +3 · 24 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.86.2427
6 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PRL
arxiv created 2000/08/24 · openalex publication_date 2001/03/12 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
We report measurements of the temperature dependence of the critical current, I(c), in Josephson junctions consisting of conventional superconducting banks of Nb and a weakly ferromagnetic interlayer of a CuxNi1-x alloy, with x around 0.5. With decreasing temperature I(c) generally increases, but for specific thicknesses of the ferromagnetic interlayer, a maximum is found followed by a strong decrease down to zero, after which I(c) rises again. Such a sharp cusp can be explained only by assuming that the junction changes from a 0-phase state at high temperatures to a pi phase state at low temperatures.