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Register a new userCritical Current Oscillations of Josephson Junctions Containing PdFe Nanomagnets
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Josephson junctions with ferromagnetic layers are vital elements in a new class of cryogenic memory devices. One style of memory device contains a spin valve with one hard magnetic layer and one soft layer. To achieve low switching fields, it is advantageous for the soft layer to have low magnetization and low magnetocrystalline anisotropy. A candidate class of materials that fulfills these criteria is the Pd$_{1-x}$Fe$_{x}$ alloy system with low Fe concentrations. We present studies of micron-scale elliptically-shaped Josephson junctions containing Pd$_{97}$Fe$_{3}$ layers of varying thickness. By applying an external magnetic field, the critical current of the junctions are found to follow characteristic Fraunhofer patterns. The maximum value of the critical current, extracted from the Fraunhofer patterns, oscillates as a function of the ferromagnetic barrier thickness, indicating transitions in the phase difference across the junction between values of zero and $pi$.
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Josephson junctions containing ferromagnetic layers are of considerable interest for the development of practical cryogenic memory and superconducting qubits. Such junctions exhibit a phase shift of $pi$ for certain ranges of ferromagnetic layer thickness. We present studies of Nb based micron-scale elliptically-shaped Josephson junctions containing ferromagnetic barriers of Ni$_{81}$Fe$_{19}$ or Ni$_{65}$Co$_{20}$Fe$_{15}$. By applying an external magnetic field, the critical current of the junctions are found to follow characteristic Fraunhofer patterns, and display sharp switching behavior suggestive of single-domain magnets. The high quality of the Fraunhofer patterns enables us to extract the maximum value of the critical current even when the peak is shifted significantly outside the range of the data due to the magnetic moment of the ferromagnetic layer. The maximum value of the critical current oscillates as a function of the ferromagnetic barrier thickness, indicating transitions in the phase difference across the junction between values of zero and $pi$. We compare the data to previous work and to models of the 0-$pi$ transitions based on existing theories.
The magnetic and transport properties of $Pd_{0.99}Fe_{0.01}$ thin films have been studied. We have found that the Curie temperature of the films is about 20 K and the magnetic properties strongly depend on temperature below $T_{Curie}$. We have also fabricated the set of superconductor-ferromagnet-superconductor josephson junctions $Nb-PdFe-Nb$. The temperature dependence of the junctions with the ferromagnet layer thickness of about 36 nm shows the reentrant behaviour that is the evidence of the transition of the junction into the $pi$-state.
We report magnetic and electrical measurements of Nb Josephson junctions with strongly ferromagnetic barriers of Co, Ni and Ni80Fe20 (Py). All these materials show multiple oscillations of critical current with barrier thickness implying repeated 0-pi phase-transitions in the superconducting order parameter. We show in particular that the Co barrier devices can be accurately modelled using existing clean limit theories and so that, despite the high exchange energy (309 meV), the large IcRN value in the pi-state means Co barriers are ideally suited to the practical development of superconducting pi-shift devices.
We consider theoretically and numerically magnetic field dependencies of the maximum supercurrent across Josephson tunnel junctions with spatially alternating critical current density. We find that two flux-penetration fields and one-splinter-vortex equilibrium state exist in long junctions.
We treat theoretically Shapiro steps in tunnel Josephson junctions with spatially alternating critical current density. Explicit analytical formulas for the width of the first integer (normal) and half-integer (anomalous) Shapiro steps are derived for short junctions. We develop coarse-graining approach, which describes Shapiro steps in the voltage-current curves of the asymmetric grain boundaries in YBCO thin films and different superconductor-ferromagnet-superconductor Josephson-type heterostructures.
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