Long-range supercurrents through a chiral non-collinear antiferromagnet in lateral Josephson junctions

Superconductivity and magnetism are antigonistic orders. Coupling them in heterostructures enables many twists for manipulating electronic states. Conventional superconductivity arises from the pairing of electrons into Cooper pairs forming singlet spin states. In this work, we show, through Josephson supercurrent measurements, that conventional Cooper pairs can be transformed into unconventional ones (in the triplet spin state) by injecting them in a chiral anti-ferromagnet. These results could have important implications on our understanding of the interplay of superconductivity and magnetic textures and could enable the engineering of new phases of matter.

Nb/Mn₃Ge/Nb lateral Josephson junctions

More:
Jeon, KR., Hazra, B.K., Cho, K. et al. Long-range supercurrents through a chiral non-collinear antiferromagnet in lateral Josephson junctions. Nat. Mater. 20, 1358–1363 (2021).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-01061-9

Author affiliation:
Laboratoire de physique de L’École normale supérieure (LPENS, ENS Paris/CNRS/Sorbonne Université/Université de Paris)

Corresponding author: Takis Kontos
Communication contact: L’équipe de communication