See our recent publication in Nature Materials !
The Josephson effect results from the coupling of two superconductors across a spacer such as an insulator, a normal metal or a ferromagnet to yield a phase-coherent quantum state. However, in junctions with ferromagnetic spacers, very long-range Josephson effects have remained elusive.
Here we demonstrate extremely long-range (micrometric) high-temperature (tens of kelvins) Josephson coupling across the half-metallic manganite La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 combined with the superconducting cuprate YBa2Cu3O7.
These planar junctions, in addition to large critical currents, display the hallmarks of Josephson physics, such as critical current oscillations driven by magnetic flux quantization and quantum phase-locking effects under microwave excitation (Shapiro steps). The latter display an anomalous doubling of the Josephson frequency predicted by several theories. In addition to its fundamental interest, the marriage between high-temperature, dissipationless quantum coherent transport and full spin polarization brings opportunities for the practical realization of superconducting spintronics, and opens new perspectives for quantum computing.
This work is a collaboration between the University Complutense of Madrid, ESPCI Paris, LOMA Bordeaux, and my group at UMPhy CNRS/Thales. The work here has been financed by grants ERC “SUSPINTRONICS” and ANR “SUPERTRONICS”
“Extremely long-range, high-temperature Josephson coupling across a half-metallic ferromagnet” D. Sanchez-Manzano, S. Mesoraca, F. A. Cuellar, M. Cabero, V. Rouco, G. Orfila, X. Palermo, A. Balan, L. Marcano, A. Sander, M. Rocci, J. Garcia-Barriocanal, F. Gallego, J. Tornos, A. Rivera, F. Mompean, M. Garcia-Hernandez, J. M. Gonzalez-Calbet, C. Leon, S. Valencia, C. Feuillet-Palma, N. Bergeal, A. I. Buzdin, J. Lesueur, Javier E. Villegas & J. Santamaria Nature Materials (2021). Free access here
Javier E. Villegas 