Odd Triplet Pairing in Clean Superconductor/Ferromagnet Heterostructures

Abstract

We study triplet pairing correlations in clean ferromagnet (F)/superconductor (S) nanojunctions, via fully self-consistent solution of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. We consider FSF trilayers, with S being an s-wave superconductor, and an arbitrary angle alpha between the magnetizations of the two F layers. We find that contrary to some previous expectations, triplet correlations, odd in time, are induced in both the S and F layers in the clean limit. We investigate their behavior as a function of time, position, and alpha. The triplet amplitudes are largest at times on the order of the inverse Debye frequency, and at that time scale they are long-ranged in both S and F. The zero temperature condensation energy is found to be lowest when the magnetizations are antiparallel.