QUANTUM SIZE EFFECTS IN SUPERCONDUCTING JUNCTIONS WITH A FERROMAGNETIC INTERLAYER
Motivated by a recent experiment evidencing an unusual double-peak structure in tunneling conductance spectra of a nano-sized ferromagnet - superconductor bilayer, we propose a clean-limit scattering-like model for a quasi-ballistic transport in superconducting heterostructures with conducting ferromagnetic films. The model also includes an effect of charge interactions with an environment which partially degrade quantum correlations in the system. Our numerical simulations show that (i) the observed feature arises from a quantum-mechanical geometrical size effect and (ii) such measurements can serve as a sensitive tool for controlling quantum-mechanical phenomena in the studied junctions.
size effect quantum superposition ferromagnet-superconductor bilayer tunneling spectroscopy decoherence