We show that the spin pumping from ferromagnetic insulator into the adjacent metallic spin sink can be strongly stimulated by the superconducting correlations.
The key physical mechanism responsible for this effect is the presence of quasiparticle surface states at the ferromagnetic insulator/superconductor interface. We consider the minimal model when these states appear because of the suppressed pairing constant within the interfacial normal layer. For thin normal layers we obtain a strongly peaked temperature dependence of the Gilbert damping coefficient which has been recently observed in such systems. For thicker normal layers the Gilbert damping monotonically increases down to the temperatures much smaller than the critical one. The suggested model paves the way to controlling the temperature dependence of the spin pumping by fabricating hybrid normal metal/superconductor spin sinks.
Ising superconductivity has been recently discovered in 2D transition metal dichalcogenides. We report that such superconductors have unusual optical properties controlled by the in-plane Zeeman field. First, we find several optical gaps visible as peaks of the conductivity and the Raman susceptibility. Moreover, we find that the Ising spin splitting in the spectrum of Bogolubov quasiparticles enables strong population inversion generated by the time-dependent Zeeman field. Ultimately this leads to the possibility of the superconducting laser with magnonic pumping which can be realized in the …
Static spin susceptibility of superconductors with spin-orbit relaxation has been calculated in the seminal work of A.A. Abrikosov and L.P. Gor'kov [Sov. Phys. JETP, {\bf 15}, 752 (1962)]. Surprisingly the generalization of this result to finite frequencies has not been done despite being quite important for the modern topic of superconducting spintronics. The present paper fills this gap by deriving the analytical expression for spin susceptibility. The time-dependent spin response is shown to be captured by the quasiclassical Eilenberger equation with collision integrals corresponding to the…
We present a formalism to study adiabatic pumping through a superconductor - normal - superconductor weak link. At zero temperature, the pumped charge is related to the Berry phase accumulated, in a pumping cycle, by the Andreev bound states. We analyze in detail the case when the normal region is short compared to the superconducting coherence length. The pumped charge turns out to be an even function of the superconducting phase difference. Hence, it can be distinguished from the charge transferred due to the standard Josephson effect.
We investigate charge pumping in ferromagnet/triplet superconductor junctions where the magnetization of the ferromagnet is inhomogeneous and dynamical. It is shown that charge current is pumped due to the coupling of the localized spin with triplet vector spin chirality, vector spin chirality formed by the triplet vector of Cooper pairing. Physical mechanism of the charge pumping is also discussed.
We study theoretically spin pumping in bilayers consisting of superconductors and antiferromagnetic insulators. We consider both compensated and uncompensated interfaces and include both the regular scattering channel and the Umklapp scattering channel. We find that at temperatures close to the critical temperatures and precession frequencies much lower than the gap, the spin-current is enhanced in superconductors as compared to normal metals. Otherwise, the spin-current is suppressed. The relevant precession frequencies where the spin-current in SC/AFI is enhanced compared to NM/AFI is much l…
Spin pumping refers to the microwave-driven spin current injection from a ferromagnet into the adjacent target material. We theoretically investigate the spin pumping into superconductors by fully taking account of impurity spin-orbit scattering that is indispensable to describe diffusive spin transport with finite spin diffusion length. We calculate temperature dependence of the spin pumping signal and show that a pronounced coherence peak appears immediately below the superconducting transition temperature Tc, which survives even in the presence of the spin-orbit scattering. The phenomenon p…
The iron-based superconductor FeTe$_{1-x}$Se$_{x}$ has attracted considerable attention as a candidate topological superconductor owing to a unique combination of topological surface states and bulk high-temperature superconductivity. The superconducting properties of as-grown single crystals, however, are highly variable and synthesis dependent due to excess interstitial iron impurities incorporated during growth. Here we report a novel physicochemical process for pumping this interstitial iron out of the FeTe$_{1-x}$Se$_{x}$ matrix and achieving bulk superconductivity. Our method should have…
Anomalous spin-pumping behavior of half-metallic ferromagnet/d-wave superconductor heterostructures
Laboratoire Albert Fert, CNRS, Thales, Université Paris Saclay（阿尔贝·费朗实验室，法国国家科学研究中心，泰雷兹集团，巴黎萨克雷大学）；ICTS - Centro Nacional de Microscopía Electrónica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid（综合微观技术中心-国家电子显微镜中心，马德里康普顿斯大学）；Condensed Matter Theory Group, University Bordeaux I, CPMOH UMR-CNRS 5798（波尔多第一大学凝聚态理论组，CPMOH UMR-CNRS 5798）；GFMC, Dept. Física de Materiales, Facultad de Física, Universidad Complutense（物质材料物理系，物理学院，马德里康普顿斯大学）
We analyze theoretically adiabatic quantum pumping through a normal conductor that couples the normal regions of two superconductor/normal metal/superconductor Josephson junctions. By using the phases of the superconducting order parameter in the superconducting contacts as pumping parameters, we demonstrate that a non zero pumped charge can flow through the device. The device exploits the evolution of the superconducting phases due to the ac Josephson effect, and can therefore be operated at very high frequency, resulting in a pumped current as large as a few nanoAmperes. The experimental rel…
In this work, we investigated the nonadiabatic transport properties of the one-dimensional time-dependent superconductor-normal metal-superconductor (SNS) Josephson junction biased by a current source and driven by a high-frequency-ac-gate-potential applied to the normal-metal layer. BCS superconductors are considered and treated with the time-dependent Bogoliubov-de Gennes equation. Using Floquet theory, we compute the transmission coefficients and the Wigner-Smith delay times as a function of the incident energy and find that they display resonances when one of the electron or hole Floquet w…
We review recent work on the theory for pump/probe photoemission spectroscopy of electron-phonon mediated superconductors in both the normal and the superconducting states. We describe the formal developments that allow one to solve the Migdal-Eliashberg theory in nonequilibrium for an ultrashort laser pumping field, and explore the solutions which illustrate the relaxation as energy is transferred from electrons to phonons. We focus on exact results emanating from sum rules and approximate numerical results which describe rules of thumb for relaxation processes. In addition, in the supercondu…
The order parameter of High-T$_{c}$ superconductors through a series of experiments has been quite conclusively demonstrated to not be of the normal $s-wave$ type. It is either a pure $d_{x^{2}-y^{2}}$-wave type or a mixture of a $d_{x^{2}-y^{2}}-wave$ with a small imaginary $s-wave$ or $d_{xy}-wave$ component. In this work a distinction is brought out among the four types, i.e., $s- wave$, $d_{x^{2}-y^{2}}- wave$, $d_{x^{2}-y^{2}}+is - wave$ and $d_{x^{2}-y^{2}}+id_{xy}- wave$ types with the help of quantum pumping spectroscopy. This involves a normal metal double barrier structure in contact…
We propose a setup to realize time-reversal invariant topological superconductors in quantum wires, proximity coupled to conventional superconductors. We consider a model of quantum wire with strong spin-orbit coupling and proximity coupling to two s-wave superconductors. When the relative phase between the two superconductors is $ϕ=π$ a Kramers' pair of Majorana zero modes appears at each edge of the wire. We study the robustness of the phase in presence of both time-reversal invariant and time-reversal breaking perturbations. In addition, we show that the system forms a natural realization o…
A drastic enhancement of the thermal Hall angle in $d$-wave superconductors was observed experimentally in a cuprate superconductor and in CeCoIn$_5$ at low temperatures and very weak magnetic field [Phys. Rev. Lett. $\bf 86$, 890 (2001); Phys. Rev. B $\bf 72$, 214515 (2005)]. However, to the best of our knowledge, its microscopic calculation has not been performed yet. To study this microscopically, we derive the thermal Hall coefficient in extreme type-II superconductors with an isolated pinned vortex based on the augmented quasiclassical equations of superconductivity with the Lorentz force…
We study the effects of an electric-field in the transport properties of bulk granular superconductors with different kinds of disorder. We find that for a d-wave granular superconductor with random $π$-junctions the critical current always increases after applying a strong electric field, regardless of the polarity of the field. This result plus a change in the voltage as a function of the electric field are in good agreement with experimental results in ceramic high T_c superconductors.
Vortex entry into (110) oriented YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{7-x}$ films has been studied by tunneling into Andreev - Saint-James bound states, whose energy is shifted by surface currents. At low temperatures, the characteristic field for vortex entry has been found to increase up to values several times higher than that of the Bean-Livingston entry field for conventional superconductors, in agreement with recent theoretical predictions.
Recent experiments on heterostructures composed of two or more films of cuprate superconductors of different oxygen doping levels\cite{Yuli,Gozar} have shown a remarkable T$_c$ enhancement (up to 50%) relative to single compound films. We provide here a simple explanation of the enhancement which arises naturally from a collection of experimental works. We show that the enhancement could be caused by a structural change in the lattice, namely an increase in the distance of the apical oxygen from the copper-oxygen plane. This increase modifies the effective off-site interaction in the plane whi…
We succeed in enhancement of a superconducting transition temperature (Tc) for NdO0.7F0.3BiS2 single crystal by partial substitution of Pb for Bi. The Tc increases with increasing Pb concentration until 6%. The maximum Tczero is 5.6 K, which is the highest value among BiS2 based superconductors synthesized under an ambient pressure. Pb substitution for Bi induces lattice shrinkage along the c axis. These results reflect that superconductivity in this system is responsive to the lattice strain.
We put forth a mechanism for enhancing the interlayer transport in cuprate superconductors, by optically driving plasmonic excitations along the $c$ axis with a frequency that is blue-detuned from the Higgs frequency. The plasmonic excitations induce a collective oscillation of the Higgs field which induces a parametric enhancement of the superconducting response, as we demonstrate with a minimal analytical model. Furthermore, we perform simulations of a particle-hole symmetric $U(1)$ lattice gauge theory and find good agreement with our analytical prediction. We map out the renormalization of…
We report observation of the enhancement of superconductivity near lattice dislocations and the absence of the strengthening of vortex pinning in odd-parity superconductor Sr$_2$RuO$_4$, both surprising results in direct contrast to the well known sensitivity of superconductivity in Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ to disorder. The enhanced superconductivity appears to be related fundamentally to the two-component nature of the superconducting order parameter, as revealed in our phenomenological theory taking into account the effect of symmetry reduction near a dislocation.
m-H loops for virgin and neutron irradiated bulk and powder samples of MgB_{2} were measured in the temperature range 5-30 K in magnetic field B<= 1 T. The irradiation at thermal neutron fluences 9*10^{13} and 4.5*10^{14} cm^{-2} caused very small enhancement of m-H loops at lower temperatures (T<20 K), whereas the effect at high temperatures was unclear due to difficulty in achieving exactly the same measurement temperature prior and after irradiation. However, the irradiation at 4.5*10^{15} cm^{-2} produced clear enhancement of m-H loops (hence J_{c}) at all investigated temperatures, which …
We investigate the low-energy quantum transport in the ballistic normal metal-insulator -superconductor junction in the presence of magnetic field creating Abrikosov vortices in the superconductor. Within the Bogolubov- de Gennes theory we show that the presence of the subgap quasiparticle states localized within the vortex cores near the junction interface leads to the strong resonant enhancement of the Andreev reflection probability, and the normal-to supercurrent conversion. The corresponding increase of the charge conductance of the junction is determined by the distance from the vortex ch…
We report that the incorporation of hydroxide ions (OH)- significantly enhances the superconducting transition temperature (Tc) in the LnFeAsO-based superconductors (Ln1111: Ln = La, Ce and Pr). For La1111, Tc of the (OH)- incorporated sample synthesized using high-pressure technique becomes 35 K, which is higher by 7 K than the typical optimally-doped La1111 superconductors. Similar enhancement in Tc is also observed for Ce1111 and Pr1111. 1H-NMR measurement have confirmed the existence of hydrogen atoms in the samples. Accompanying the (OH)- incorporation, the lattice parameters are largely …
Measurements of the critical current density (Jc) by magnetization and the upper critical field (Hc2) by magnetoresistance have been performed for hafnium-doped MgB2. There has been a remarkable enhancement of Jc as compared to that by ion irradiation without any appreciable decrease in Tc, which is beneficial from the point of view of applications. The irreversibility line extracted from Jc shows an upward shift. In addition, there has been an increase in the upper critical field which indicates that Hf partially substitutes for Mg. Hyperfine interaction parameters obtained from time differen…
Giant enhancement of the nonlinear response of a single crystal Nb sample, placed in {\it a pumping ac magnetic field}, has been observed experimentally. The experimentally observed amplitude of the output signal is about three orders of magnitude higher than that seen without parametric pumping. The theoretical analysis based on the extended double well potential model provides a qualitative explanation of the experimental results as well as new predictions of two bifurcations for specific values of the pumping signal.
We calculate the dc Josephson current for two superconductor-ferromagnet (S/F) bilayers separated by a thin insulating film. It is demonstrated that the critical Josephson current $I_{c}$ in the junction strongly depends on the relative orientation of the effective exchange field $h$ of the bilayers. We found that in the case of an antiparallel orientation, $I_{c}$ increases at low temperatures with increasing $h$ and at zero temperature has a singularity when $h$ equals the superconducting gap $Δ$. This striking behavior contrasts suppression of the critical current by the magnetic moments al…
Transverse-field muon-spin rotation measurements performed on two samples of LiFeAs demonstrate that the superfluid stiffness of the superconducting condensate in relation to its superconducting transition temperature is enhanced compared to other pnictide superconductors. Evidence is seen for a field-induced magnetic state in a sample with a significantly suppressed superconducting transition temperature. The results in this system highlight the role of direct Fe-Fe interactions in frustrating pairing mediated by antiferromagnetic fluctuations and suggest that, in common with other pnictide s…
In high-purity crystals of YBa_2Cu_3O_7, the quasiparticle (qp) lifetime τand the (weak-field) thermal Hall conductivity κ_{xy} undergo dramatic increases below 90K. We present a detailed picture of the behavior of κ_{xy} at low temperature, in particular its scaling properties, which are directly relevant to the issue of whether Landau quantization of the qp states occurs.
We calculate the wave-vector dependent electronic spin susceptibility $χ_{αβ}(\mathbf q, \mathbf H_0)$ of a d-wave superconductor in uniform magnetic field $\mathbf{H}_0$ with Pauli pair-breaking. We find that the transverse component of the susceptibility tensor can be greater than its normal state value; the longitudinal component also slightly increases but in a very limited range of $q$s. We identify several wave vectors $\{\mathbf q_\perp,\mathbf q_\parallel\}$, that correspond to the maxima of either $χ_\perp$ or $χ_\parallel$. We compare our results with available data on the high-field…
Recent experiments showed that thinning gallium, iron selenide and 2H tantalum disulfide to single/several monoatomic layer(s) enhances their superconducting critical temperatures. Here, we characterize these superconductors by extracting the absolute values of the London penetration depth, the superconducting energy gap, and the relative jump in specific heat at the transition temperature from their self-field critical currents. Our central finding is that the enhancement in transition temperature for these materials arises from the opening of an additional superconducting gap, while retainin…
Pumping characteristics were studied of the hybrid normal-metal/superconductor single-electron transistor embedded in a high-ohmic environment. Two 3 micrometer-long microstrip resistors of CrOx with a sum resistance R=80kOhm were placed adjacent to this hybrid device. Substantial improvement of pumping and reduction of the subgap leakage were observed in the low-MHz range. At higher frequencies 0.1-1GHz, a slowdown of tunneling due to the enhanced damping and electron heating negatively affected the pumping, as compared to the reference bare devices.
We comparatively studied the critical current density, magnetization and specific heat of the rolled and the hot-pressed Sr1-xKxFe2As2 tapes. The Schottky anomaly that is obvious in the specific heat of the rolled tape disappears in the hot-pressed tape. Moreover, the hot-pressed tape has a higher fraction of superconductivity and a narrower distribution of superconducting transition temperature than the rolled tape. Combined with the magnetization data, we conclude that sintering under high pressure provides a better environment for complete chemical reaction and more homogenous dopant distri…
We use local and global magnetometry measurements to study the influence of magnetic domain width w on the domain-induced vortex pinning in superconducting/ferromagnetic bilayers, built of a Nb film and a ferromagnetic Co/Pt multilayer with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, with an insulating layer to eliminate proximity effect. The quasi-periodic domain patterns with different and systematically adjustable width w, as acquired by a special demagnetization procedure, exert tunable vortex pinning on a superconducting layer. The largest enhancement of vortex pinning, by a factor of more than 10…
The new development in sublattice-phase-resolved imaging of electronic structure now allow for the visualisation of the nematic-order state characteristic energy of cuprate superconductors in a wide doping regime. However, it is still unclear how this characteristic energy of the nematic-order state is correlated with the enhancement of superconductivity. Here the doping dependence of the nematic-order state characteristic energy in cuprate superconductors and of its possible connection to the enhancement of superconductivity is investigated within the framework of the kinetic-energy-driven su…
The dc transport properties of the (S/M)I(M/S) tunnel structure - proximity coupled superconductor (S) and magnetic (M) layers separated by an insulator (I) - in a parallel magnetic field have been investigated. We choose for the M metal the one in which the effective magnetic interaction, whether it arises from direct exchange interaction or due to configuration mixing, aligns spins of the conducting electrons antiparallel to the localized spins of magnetic ions. For tunnel structures under consideration, we predict that there are the conditions when the destructive action of the internal and…
With the relatively high critical temperature (Tc) of 39 K1 and the high critical current density (Jc) of > 100000 A/cm2 in moderate fields, magnesium diboride (MgB2) superconductors could offer the promise of important large-scale and electronic device applications to be operated at 20 K. A significant enhancement in the electromagnetic properties of MgB2 has been achieved through doping with various form of carbon (C). However, doping effect has been limited by the agglomeration of nano-sized dopants and the poor reactivity of C containing dopants with MgB2. Un-reacted dopants result in a re…
Thin film heterostructures provide a powerful means to study the antagonism between superconductivity (SC) and ferromagnetism (FM). One interesting issue in FM-SC hybrids which defies the notion of antagonistic orders is the observation of magnetic field induced superconductivity (FIS). Here we show that in systems where the FM domains/islands produce spatial inhomogeneities of the SC order parameter, the FIS can derive significant contribution from different mobilities of the magnetic flux identified by two distinct critical states in the inhomogeneous superconductor. Our experiments on nanoe…
Pnictides provide an opportunity to study the effects of quantum criticality in a multi-band high temperature superconductor. Quasiparticle mass divergence near optimal doping, observed in two major classes of high-temperature superconductors, pnictides and cuprates, is a direct experimental indicator of enhanced electronic interactions that accompany quantum criticality. Whether quasiparticles on all Fermi surface pockets in BaFe2(As1-xPx)2 are affected by quantum criticality is an open question, which specific heat measurements at high magnetic fields can directly address. Here we report spe…
We investigated the crystal structure and superconducting properties of As-grown and high-pressure-annealed PrO0.5F0.5BiS2. We found that the high-pressure annealing generates uniaxial lattice contraction along the c axis. Both As-grown and high-pressure-annealed PrO0.5F0.5BiS2 show bulk superconductivity. The Tc of PrO0.5F0.5BiS2 is clearly enhanced from Tczero = 3.6 K to Tczero = 5.5 K by high-pressure annealing. Unexpectedly, the semiconducting characteristics is relatively enhanced by high-pressure annealing. Namely, we assume that the enhancement of Tc can not be understood by an increase…
Critical temperature reduction $ΔT_c$ is considered for a thin film of a layered superconductor (S) with a rough surface covered by a thick layer of a normal metal (N). The roughness of the SN interface increases the penetration of electrons from the normal metal into the superconductor and leads to an enhancement of the proximity effect. The value of $ΔT_c$ induced by the roughness of the SN interface can be much higher than $ΔT_c$ for a film with a plain surface for an extremely anisotropic layered superconductor with the coherence lengths $ξ_a,ξ_b\ggξ_c$.
Application of high pressure (HP) induces evolution from metallic to semi-metallic state in the layered superconducting LaO1-xFxBiSe2 phase, as concluded from ab initio calculations based on experimental P-dependent structural data. These changes in conduction properties are associated with a reported decrease in the superconducting transition temperature, Tc. However, further increase in pressure induces structural transformation in LaO1-xFxBiSe2 which results in a strong enhancement of its two-dimensionality with a related improvement in superconducting performance. In addition, the HP struc…
Nanoscale electronic inhomogeneity in optimally doped single-layer Bi_2Sr_{1.6}L_{0.4}CuO_{6+delta}, (L-Bi2201, L=La and Gd) as well as bilayer Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+delta} (Bi2212), superconductors has been investigated by the low-temperature scanning-tunneling-microscopy and spectroscopy. The inhomogeneous gap structures are observed above and below Tc on Gd-Bi2201. Increasing the out-of-plane disorder which is controlled by mismatch of the ionic radius between Sr and Ln results in the enhancement of pseudogap region with suppressed coherence peaks in the conductance spectrum, making the gap av…
We study a model of a composite system constructed from a "pairing layer" of disconnected attractive-U Hubbard sites that is coupled by single-particle tunneling, t_perp, to a disordered metallic layer. For small inter-layer tunneling the system is described by an effective long-range XY phase model whose critical temperature, T_c, is essentially insensitive to the disorder and is exponentially suppressed by quantum fluctuations. T_c reaches a maximum for intermediate values of t_perp, which we calculate using a combination of mean-field, classical and quantum Monte Carlo methods. The maximal …
The V-Ti alloys are promising materials as alternate to the commercial Nb-based superconductors for high current-high magnetic field applications. However, the critical current density (J_c) of these alloys are somewhat low due to their low grain-boundary density. We show here that grain refinement of the V-Ti alloys and enhancement of the J_c can be achieved by the addition of Gd into the system, which precipitates as clusters along the grain boundaries. Both the J_c and the pinning force density (F_P) increase with the increasing Gd content up to 1 at. % Gd, where they are more than 20 times…
We report the effect of hydrostatic pressure (0-1.97GPa) on the superconductivity of BiS2 based CeO0.5F0.5BiS2 compound. The CeO0.5F0.5BiS2 superconductor was synthesized by the solid state reaction route and the compound is crystallized in tetragonal P4/nmm space group. The studied compound shows superconductivity with transition temperature of 2.5K (Tconset) at ambient pressure, which has been enhanced to 8 K at applied pressure of 1.97 GPa. The observed normal resistivity exhibited semiconducting behavior. The data of normal state resistivity R(T) has been fitted by activation type equation…
We report on transport measurements on Nb/Al/Gd/Al/Nb junctions.Bulk Gadolinium is a weakly polarized ferromagnet (5-7%), and is present in the junction in granular form (superparamagnet). We show that Andreev reflection is strongly enhanced by a weak polarization, obtained by applying an external magnetic field. A new model is proposed that accounts for this effect. The transport is described in terms of ``hot'' carriers that experience Zeeman splitting due to the spin polarized background. The Landauer formula is $G=(4e^2)/h A(h_b)$, $h_b$ being the exchange field at the grain boundary, and …
Proximity-induced long-range spin-triplet supercurrents, important for the field of superconducting spintronics, are generated in superconducting/ferromagnetic heterostructures when interfacial magnetic inhomogeneities responsible for spin mixing and spin flip scattering are present. The multilayer stack Nb/Cr/Fe/Cr/Nb has been shown to support such exotic currents when fabricated into Josephson junction devices. However, creating pure spin currents controllably in superconductors outside of the Josephson junction architecture is a bottleneck to progress. Recently, ferromagnetic resonance was …
