2008/06/30 by Jacob Linder, Takehito Yokoyama, Yukio Tanaka +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.78.014516
published as Phys. Rev. B 78, 014516 (2008) · 5 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B
arxiv created 2008/06/30 · openalex publication_date 2008/07/18 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We consider a thin-film normal-metal/superconductor junction in the presence of an externally applied in-plane magnetic field for several symmetries of the superconducting order parameter. For p-wave superconductors, a strongly spin-polarized current emerges due to an interplay between the nodal structure of the superconducting order parameter, the existence or nonexistence of zero-energy surface states, and the Zeeman splitting of the bands which form superconductivity. Thus, the polarization depends strongly on the orbital symmetry of the superconducting state. Our findings suggest a mechanism for obtaining fully spin-polarized currents crucially involving zero-energy surface states, not present in s-wave superconductors.