Jacobsen Sol H, Kulagina Iryna, Linder Jacob
Department of Physics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway.
Sci Rep. 2016 Apr 5;6:23926. doi: 10.1038/srep23926.
Spin transport via electrons is typically plagued by Joule heating and short decay lengths due to spin-flip scattering. It is known that dissipationless spin currents can arise when using conventional superconducting contacts, yet this has only been experimentally demonstrated when using intricate magnetically inhomogeneous multilayers, or in extreme cases such as half-metals with interfacial magnetic disorder. Moreover, it is unknown how such spin supercurrents decay in the presence of spin-flip scattering. Here, we present a method for generating a spin supercurrent by using only a single homogeneous magnetic element. Remarkably, the spin supercurrent generated in this way does not decay spatially, in stark contrast to normal spin currents that remain polarized only up to the spin relaxation length. We also expose the existence of a superconductivity-mediated torque even without magnetic inhomogeneities, showing that the different components of the spin supercurrent polarization respond fundamentally differently to a change in the superconducting phase difference. This establishes a mechanism for tuning dissipationless spin and charge flow separately, and confirms the advantage that superconductors can offer in spintronics.
通过电子的自旋输运通常会受到焦耳热和由于自旋翻转散射导致的短衰减长度的困扰。众所周知,使用传统超导接触时会出现无耗散自旋电流,但这仅在使用复杂的磁不均匀多层结构时,或者在诸如具有界面磁无序的半金属等极端情况下通过实验得到了证明。此外,在存在自旋翻转散射的情况下,这种自旋超电流如何衰减尚不清楚。在这里,我们提出了一种仅使用单个均匀磁性元件来产生自旋超电流的方法。值得注意的是,以这种方式产生的自旋超电流在空间上不会衰减,这与仅在自旋弛豫长度内保持极化的正常自旋电流形成鲜明对比。我们还揭示了即使没有磁不均匀性也存在超导介导的转矩,表明自旋超电流极化的不同分量对超导相位差变化的响应在根本上是不同的。这建立了一种分别调节无耗散自旋和电荷流的机制,并证实了超导体在自旋电子学中可以提供的优势。