2012/08/06 by A. S. Mel'nikov, A. V. Samokhvalov, S. M. Kuznetsova +1
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.109.237006
5 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2012/08/06 · arxiv updated 2015/06/11
We study peculiarities of proximity effect in clean superconductor -- ferromagnet structures caused by either spatial or momentum dependence of the exchange field. Even a small modulation of the exchange field along the quasiparticle trajectories is shown to provide a long range contribution to the supercurrent due to the specific interference of particle- and hole- like wave functions. The momentum dependence of the exchange field caused by the spin -- orbit interaction results in the long -- range superconducting correlations even in the absence of ferromagnetic domain structure and can explain the recent experiments on ferromagnetic nanowires.