2008/08/25 by Iver B. Sperstad, Iver Bakken Sperstad, Jacob Linder +1 · 1 citation
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.78.104509
published as Phys. Rev. B 78, 104509 (2008) · 12 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B. High-quality figures will be available in the published version
arxiv created 2008/08/25 · openalex publication_date 2008/09/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We calculate the Josephson current in a diffusive superconductor/ferromagnet/superconductor junction, where the ferromagnetic region contains multiple layers (or domains). In particular, we study a configuration where there are two layers with an arbitrary relative in-plane magnetization orientation and also include nonideal interfaces and arbitrary spin-flip scattering. We study the 0\text\ensuremath-\ensuremathπ oscillations of the critical current for varying junction width d and find that the \ensuremathπ state vanishes entirely when the magnetic misorientation angle of the two layers exceeds a critical angle \ensuremathφc. While \ensuremathφc\ensuremath→\ensuremathπ/2 in the limit of high temperatures, we find that \ensuremathφc becomes smaller than \ensuremathπ/2 at low temperatures compared to Tc. 0\text\ensuremath-\ensuremathπ oscillations are also found when varying the temperature or the misorientation angle for fixed values of d, and we present phase diagrams that show qualitatively the conditions for the appearance of such oscillations. We also point out how one may obtain significant enhancement of the critical current in such a system by switching the magnetization for selected values of the junction width d, and comment on the necessary conditions for establishing a long-range triplet Josephson effect.