Tunneling conductance through the half-metal/conical magnet/superconductor junctions in the adiabatic and non-adiabatic regimes: Self-consistent calculations

Abstract

The tunneling conductance through the half-metal/conical magnet/superconductor (HM/CM/SC) junctions is investigated with the use of the Bogoliubov–de Gennes equations in the framework of Blonder–Tinkham–Klapwijk formalism. Due to the spin band separation in the HM, the conductance in the subgap region is mainly determined by the anomalous Andreev reflection, the probability of which strongly depends on the spin transmission in the CM layer. We show that the spins of electrons injected from the HM can be transmitted through the CM to the SC either adiabatically or non-adiabatically depending on the period of the spatial modulation of the exchange field. We find that the conductance in the subgap region oscillates as a function of the CM layer thickness wherein the oscillations transform from the irregular pattern in the non-adiabatic regime to the regular one in the adiabatic regime. For both adiabatic and non-adiabatic transport regimes the conductance is studied over a broad range of parameters determining the spiral magnetization in the CM. We find that in the non-adiabatic regime, the decrease of the exchange field amplitude in the CM leads to the emergence of the conductance peak for the particular CM thickness in agreement with recent experiments.