This article is cited in 21 papers

CONDENSED MATTER

Critical current in S-FNF-S Josephson structures with the noncollinear magnetization vectors of ferromagnetic films

T. Yu. Karminskaya^a, M. Yu. Kupriyanov^a, A. A. Golubov<sup>b

a</sup> Skobel'tsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, Moscow, 119992, Russia
^b Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands

Abstract: The critical current I _C of S-FNF-S Josephson junctions, which are ferromagnet (F)-normal metal (N)-ferromagnet multilayer structures whose ends are in contact with the superconducting (S) electrodes, has been calculated. It has been shown that both the magnitude and sign of I _C depends significantly on the misorientation angle α of the magnetization vectors M _{1, 2} of the ferromagnetic films and the distance L between the superconducting electrodes. The effect of the triplet superconducting component ~⟨;ψ↑ψ↑⟩ ~⟨;ψ↓ψ↓⟩ appearing in the structure on I _C(α) has been analyzed. It has been proven that a new type of the π junction exists, appearing due to the superposition of two contributions to I _C that decrease monotonically with L and are damped at lengths about the coherence length of the normal metal. It has been shown that the effective control over the magnitude and sign of I _C of the structure is achieved at a small deflection of the vectors M _{1, 2} from the antiferromagnetic (M ₁ ↑↓ M ₂) configuration.

PACS: 74.50.+r, 74.80.Fp

Received: 24.03.2008
Revised: 15.04.2008

 English version: Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters, 2008, 87:10, 570–576

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