Long-range supercurrents through a chiral non-collinear antiferromagnet in lateral Josephson junctions

The proximity-coupling of a chiral non-collinear antiferromagnet (AFM) 1 – 5 with a singlet superconductor allows spin-unpolarized singlet Cooper pairs to be converted into spin-polarized triplet pairs 6 – 8 , thereby enabling non-dissipative, long-range spin correlations 9 – 14 . The mechanism of t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature materials 2021-10, Vol.20 (10), p.1358-1363
Main Authors: Jeon, Kun-Rok, Hazra, Binoy Krishna, Cho, Kyungjune, Chakraborty, Anirban, Jeon, Jae-Chun, Han, Hyeon, Meyerheim, Holger L., Kontos, Takis, Parkin, Stuart S. P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
142/126
639/301/119/1003
639/766/119/1001
Antiferromagnetism
Biomaterials
Chemistry and Materials Science
Condensed Matter Physics
Cooper pairs
Electrodes
Josephson junctions
Letter
Magnetic fields
Materials Science
Nanotechnology
Optical and Electronic Materials
Physics
Quantum mechanics
Thin films
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Summary:The proximity-coupling of a chiral non-collinear antiferromagnet (AFM) 1 – 5 with a singlet superconductor allows spin-unpolarized singlet Cooper pairs to be converted into spin-polarized triplet pairs 6 – 8 , thereby enabling non-dissipative, long-range spin correlations 9 – 14 . The mechanism of this conversion derives from fictitious magnetic fields that are created by a non-zero Berry phase 15 in AFMs with non-collinear atomic-scale spin arrangements 1 – 5 . Here we report long-ranged lateral Josephson supercurrents through an epitaxial thin film of the triangular chiral AFM Mn 3 Ge (refs. 3 – 5 ). The Josephson supercurrents in this chiral AFM decay by approximately one to two orders of magnitude slower than would be expected for singlet pair correlations 9 – 14 and their response to an external magnetic field reflects a clear spatial quantum interference. Given the long-range supercurrents present in both single- and mixed-phase Mn 3 Ge, but absent in a collinear AFM IrMn 16 , our results pave a way for the topological generation of spin-polarized triplet pairs 6 – 8 via Berry phase engineering 15 of the chiral AFMs. Long-range lateral Josephson supercurrents are observed in a chiral non-collinear antiferromagnet, indicating topologically generated triplet pairing states.
ISSN:1476-1122
1476-4660
DOI:10.1038/s41563-021-01061-9