Enhancement of ferromagnetism by p-wave Cooper pairing in superconducting ferromagnets

Abstract

In superconducting ferromagnets for which the Curie temperature Tm exceeds the superconducting transition temperature Tc, it was suggested that ferromagnetic spin fluctuations could lead to superconductivity with p-wave spin-triplet Cooper pairing. Using the Stoner model of itinerant ferromagnetism, we study the feedback effect of the p-wave superconductivity on the ferromagnetism. Below Tc, the ferromagnetism is enhanced by the p-wave superconductivity. At zero temperature, the critical exchange interaction value for itinerant ferromagnetism is reduced by the strength of the p-wave pairing potential, and the magnetization increases correspondingly. More important, our results suggest that once the ferromagnetism is established, Tm is unlikely to ever be below Tc. For strong and weak ferromagnetism, three and two peaks in the temperature dependence of the specific heat are, respectively, predicted, the upper peak in the latter case corresponding to a first-order transition.

Source-reported materials — not catalogue approval

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