Enhancement of thermoelectric effect in diffusive superconducting bilayers with magnetic interfaces

We demonstrate that thermoelectric currents in superconducting bilayers with a spin-active interface are controlled by the two competing processes. On one hand, spin-sensitive quasiparticle scattering at such an interface generates an electron-hole imbalance and yields an orders-of-magnitude enhance...

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Veröffentlicht in:Physical review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics Condensed matter and materials physics, 2015-02, Vol.91 (6), Article 064504
Hauptverfasser: Kalenkov, Mikhail S., Zaikin, Andrei D.
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:We demonstrate that thermoelectric currents in superconducting bilayers with a spin-active interface are controlled by the two competing processes. On one hand, spin-sensitive quasiparticle scattering at such an interface generates an electron-hole imbalance and yields an orders-of-magnitude enhancement of the thermoelectric effect in the system. On the other hand, this electron-hole imbalance gets suppressed in the superconductor bulk due to electron scattering on nonmagnetic impurities. As a result, large thermoelectric currents can only flow in the vicinity of the spin-active interface and decay away from this interface at a distance exceeding the electron elastic mean free path [scriptl]. The magnitude of the thermoelectric effect reaches its maximum provided [scriptl] becomes of order of the total bilayer thickness.
ISSN:1098-0121
1550-235X
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.91.064504