CMT127

Dynamics of spin transport in voltage-biased Josephson junctions

• Author(s): Erhai Zhao and J. A. Sauls
• Address: Department of Physics & Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208
• Date: June 15, 2007
• Journal: Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 206601 (2007) [DOI] [PDF]
• Abstract: We investigate spin transport in voltage-biased spin-active Josephson junctions. The interplay of spin filtering, spin mixing, and multiple Andreev reflection leads to nonlinear voltage dependence of the dc and ac spin current. We compute the voltage characteristics of the spin current (I_S) for superconductor-ferromagnet-superconductor (SFS) Josephson junctions. The sub-harmonic gap structure of I_S(V) is shown to be sensitive to the degree of spin mixing generated by the ferromagnetic interface, and exhibits a pronounced even-odd effect associated with spin transport during multiple Andreev reflection processes. For strong spin mixing both the magnitude and the direction of the dc spin current can be sensitively controlled by the bias voltage.

• Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

• Eprint: [PDF] [arXiv]

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