Proximity effect in superconductor/antiferromagnet hybrids: Néel triplets and impurity suppression of superconductivity

G. A. Bobkov; I. V. Bobkova; A. M. Bobkov

doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.108.054510

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Proximity effect in superconductor/antiferromagnet hybrids: Néel triplets and impurity suppression of superconductivity

G. A. Bobkov, I. V. Bobkova, A. M. Bobkov

DOI 10.1103/PhysRevB.108.054510 · Physical Review B

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Abstract

Two possible physical mechanisms of superconductivity suppression at superconductor/antiferromagnet (S/AF) interfaces, which work even for interfaces with compensated antiferromagnets, were reported. One of them suggests that the Néel order of the AF induces rapidly oscillating spin-triplet correlations in the S layer. They are called Néel triplets, and they suppress singlet superconductivity. Nonmagnetic disorder destroys this type of triplet correlations. As a result, the critical temperature of the S/AF bilayer grows with impurity strength. The second mechanism, on the contrary, suggests that nonmagnetic impurity scattering suppresses superconductivity in S/AF hybrids. The predictions were made in the framework of two different quasiclassical approaches [G. A. Bobkov et al., Phys. Rev. B 106, 144512 (2022) and E. H. Fyhn et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 076001 (2023)]. Here we suggest the unified theory of the proximity effect in thin-film S/AF structures, which incorporates both pictures as limiting cases, and we study the proximity effect at S/AF interfaces for arbitrary impurity strength, chemical potential, and the value of the Néel exchange field.