Spin-triplet Cooper pairs induced in ferromagnets form the centrepiece of the emerging field of superconducting spintronics. Usually the focus is on the spin-polarization of the triplets, potentially enabling low-dissipation magnetization switching. However, the magnetic texture which provides the fundamental mechanism for generating triplets also permits control over the spatial distribution of supercurrent. Here we demonstrate the tailoring of distinct supercurrent pathways in the ferromagnetic barrier of a Josephson junction. We combine micromagnetic simulations with three-dimensional supercurrent calculations to design a disk-shaped structure with a ferromagnetic vortex which induces two transport channels across the junction. By using superconducting quantum interferometry, we show the existence of two channels. Moreover, we show how the supercurrent can be controlled by moving the vortex with a magnetic field. This approach paves the way for supercurrent paths to be dynamically reconfigured in order to switch between different functionalities in the same device.
We discover an intrinsic superspin Hall current: an injected charge supercurrent in a Josephson junction containing heavy normal metals and a ferromagnet generates a transverse spin supercurrent. There is no accompanying dissipation of energy, in contrast to the conventional spin Hall effect. The physical origin of the effect is an antisymmetric spin density induced among transverse modes ky near the interface of the superconductor arising due to the coexistence of p-wave and conventional s-wave superconducting correlations with a belonging phase mismatch. Our predictions can be tested in hybrid structures including thin heavy metal layers combined with strong ferromagnets and ordinary s-wave superconductors.
Thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) sustain superconductivity at large in-plane magnetic fields due to Ising spin-orbit protection which locks their spins in an out-of-plane orientation. Here we use thin NbSe2 as superconducting electrodes laterally coupled to graphene -making a planar, all van der Waals (vdW) two-dimensional Josephson junction (2DJJ). We map out the behavior of these novel devices with respect to temperature, gate voltage, and both out-of-plane and in-plane magnetic fields.Notably, the 2DJJs sustain supercurrent up to parallel fields as high as 8.5 T, where the Zeeman energy EZ rivals the Thouless energy E T h , a regime hitherto inaccessible in graphene. As the parallel magnetic field H increases, the 2DJJ's critical current is suppressed, and in a few cases undergoes a suppression and recovery. We explore the behavior in H by considering theoretically two effects: A 0-π transition induced by tuning of the Zeeman energy, and the unique effect of ripples in an atomically thin layer which create a small spatially varying perpendicular component of the field. 2DJJs have potential utility as flexible probes for two-dimensional superconductivity in a variety of materials, and introduce high H as a newly accessible experimental knob.By coupling graphene to exfoliated superconductors such as NbSe 2 [1-3] it is possible to realize Josephson junctions where both the normal and superconductor materials are two-dimensional (2D).Such junctions should sustain high in-plane magnetic fields. Thin NbSe 2 retains superconductivity at very high in-plane fields due to a combination of suppressed orbital depairing and Ising protection against pair-breaking [4, 5], and can sustain magnetic fields above 8 T without any measureable effect on the gap * Equal contribution 1
By converting conventional spin-singlet Cooper pairs to polarized spin-triplet pairs, it is possible to sustain long-ranged spin-polarized supercurrents flowing through strongly polarized ferromagnets. Obtaining such a conversion via spin-orbit interactions, rather than magnetic inhomogeneities, has recently been explored in the literature. A challenging aspect with regard to experimental detection has been that in order for Rashba spinorbit interactions, present e.g. at interfaces due to inversion symmetry breaking, to generate such long-ranged supercurrents, an out-of-plane component of the magnetization is required. This limits the choice of materials and can induce vortices in the superconducting region complicating the interpretation of measurements. Therefore, it would be desirable to identify a way in which Rashba spin-orbit interactions can induce long-ranged supercurrents for purely in-plane rotations of the magnetization. Here, we show that this is possible in a lateral Josephson junction where two superconducting electrodes are placed in contact with a ferromagnetic film via two thin, heavy normal metals. The magnitude of the supercurrent in such a setup becomes tunable by the in-plane magnetization angle when using only a single magnetic layer. These results could provide a new and simpler way to generate controllable spin-polarized supercurrents than previous experiments which utilized complicated magnetically textured Josephson junctions. arXiv:1906.07725v1 [cond-mat.supr-con]
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