Spin current injection at magnetic insulator/superconductor interfaces

Abstract

Opposite to the common idea of a magnetic order requirement to obtain spin current propagation, materials with no magnetic ordering have also been revealed to be efficient spin conductors. In this work, we investigate the spin current injection at the interface between a magnetic insulator and a superconductor. We are mainly interested in the paramagnetic insulator/superconductor interface; however, our model also describes the ferromagnetic phase. We used the Schwinger bosonic formalism to describe the magnetic insulator, and standard BCS theory was applied to treat the superconductor layer. In the normal-metal limit, our results are in agreement with the expected ones. For example, we found the correct spin current behavior I≈T3/2 at low temperature. In addition, our model shows a pronounced peak in the spin current injection at temperatures close to the superconductor transition temperature due to the superconducting quasiparticle coherence. The role of magnetic fields in the spin current injection is also investigated.

Source-reported materials — not catalogue approval

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