Interference phenomena and long-range proximity effect in clean superconductor-ferromagnet systems

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Dec 7;109(23):237006. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.237006. Epub 2012 Dec 5.

Abstract

We study peculiarities of the proximity effect in clean superconductor-ferromagnet structures caused by either the spatial or momentum dependence of the exchange field. Even a small modulation of the exchange field along the quasiparticle trajectories is shown to provide a long-range contribution to the supercurrent due to the specific interference of particle- and holelike wave functions. The momentum dependence of the exchange field caused by the spin-orbit interaction results in long-range superconducting correlations even in the absence of a ferromagnetic domain structure and can explain recent experiments on ferromagnetic nanowires.