Superconducting spintronics: state of the art and prospects

Density-functional description of materials for topological qubits and superconducting spintronics

“…Interfacing superconducting and magnetic materials forms the basis for the emergent field of superconducting spintronics. [3][4][5]59 While conventional s-wave superconductivity breaks down at critical magnetic fields, proximity between magnetic and superconducting materials provides a fruitful basis for unconventional superconductivity. In material systems where the macroscopically coherent superconducting states coexist with microscopic exchange interaction at magnetic atoms or layers, for example, triplet superconductivity, odd-frequency pairing, long-range equal-spin supercurrents or Majorana qubits can be engineered.…”

“…3,4 Devices that combine superconducting and magnetic materials allow to realize unconventional transport with superconducting spin valves or unconventional Josephson junctions consisting of superconductor ferromagnet (S/F) interfaces and S/F/S heterostructures. 5 An example are materials that provide large interfacial SOC in superconducting junctions, which allows to realize devices that show a large magnetoresistance effect. 60 Interesting effects arise not only at isolated magnetic defects in superconductors, which is discussed in this work in Sec.…”

“…This is not only due to the advent of topological superconductivity, where Majorana zero modes can form building blocks for topological quantum computing, 1,2 but it also has become of interest in the field of superconducting spintronics. [3][4][5] Novel states of matter generally can exist in complex heterostructures of, for instance, superconductors and magnetic materials, chains of magnetic atoms on superconductors, or at interfaces between superconductors and topological insulators. While a plethora of different experimental techniques allows gaining invaluable insights and simple models can explain general trends, a material-specific theory allows for predictive modeling of complex material combinations on the atomic scale.…”

Physics news on the Internet (based on electronic preprints)

“…Anisotropy was seen in the anisotropic acoustic response to ultrasonic pulses, and it was reliably confirmed for the first time. For the role of the Fulde±Ferrell±Larkin±Ovchinnikov state in superconducting spintronics, see [7].…”

Anomalous Josephson Hall effect in doped topological insulators with the nematic superconductivity

“…The discovery of topological superconductivity opens a new prospect in the Josephson physics [4]. In particular, the study of the Josephson currents in superconductorferromagnetic (SF) heterostructures gives rise to the observation of a set of new physical phenomena and the development of a new family of superconducting devices [5]. An important property of the SF systems is the possibility to govern the Josephson current by fine-tuning of magnetization of the F layer.…”