Persistent Spin Currents in Superconducting Altermagnets

Abstract

Superconductors are famously capable of supporting persistent electrical currents, that is, currents that flow without any measurable decay as long as the material is kept in the superconducting state. We introduce here a class of materials—superconducting altermagnets—that can both generate and carry persistent spin currents. This includes spin-polarized electrical supercurrent as well as pure spin supercurrent that facilitates spin transport in the absence of any charge transport. A key to this remarkable property is the realization that the leading superconducting instability of altermagnetic metals consists of two independent condensates formed of spin-up and spin-down electrons. In the nonrelativistic limit, the two condensates are decoupled and can, thus, naturally support persistent currents with any spin polarization, including pure spin supercurrents realized in the charge counterflow regime. We describe a novel “spin-current dynamo effect” that can be used to generate pure spin supercurrent in such systems by driving a charge current along certain crystallographic directions. Away from the nonrelativistic limit, when spin-orbit interactions and magnetic disorder are present, we find that the spin current generically develops spatial oscillations but, importantly, no dissipation or decay. This is in stark contrast to spin currents in normal diffusive metals which tend to decay on relatively short length scales. We illustrate the above properties by performing model calculations relevant to two distinct classes of altermagnets and various device geometries.

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