Upper critical fields of superconductor-antiferromagnet superlattices

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:548485

Krivoruchko, V N ^[1]

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1. National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Donetsk (Ukraine). Donetsk Physical and Technical Inst.

Nucleation of the superconducting phase in proximity coupled superconductor-antiferromagnetic (SC/AF) multilayers is studied theoretically. Assuming that both superconducting and antiferromagnetic metals are dirty the superconducting transition temperature, {Tc}, and upper critical fields, H{sub c2{parallel}}(T) and H{sub c2{perpendicular}}(T), as functions from the system parameters have been calculated. Comparison of the results for the SC/AF structures and for the SC/ferromagnetic multilayers shows that the values of the {Tc}, H{sub c2{parallel}}(T) and H{sub c2{perpendicular}}(T) are more sensitive to the ferromagnetic exchange field than to the antiferromagnetic one. The main difference in the values of the critical fields is obtained for the structures formed by thin superconducting layers. The finite effect on the superconducting properties of the multilayers does not depend on the strength of the magnetism only, but on the scattering mechanism of the electrons at the interfaces too. The advantage of the antiferromagnetic interaction for nucleation of the SC phase will be lost if nearly all Cooper pairs are destroyed due to the interface scattering.

• OSTI ID: 548485
• Report Number(s): CONF-960163--; ISBN 0-8194-2071-9
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
66 PHYSICS
CRITICAL FIELD
METALS
PROXIMITY EFFECT
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
SUPERLATTICES
TRANSITION TEMPERATURE