Nonlocal Spin Transport Mediated by a Vortex Liquid in Superconductors

ORAL

Abstract

Departing from the conventional view on superconducting vortices as a parasitic source of dissipation for charge transport, we propose to use mobile vortices as topologically-stable information carriers [1]. To this end, we start by constructing a phenomenological theory for the interconversion between spin and vorticity, a topological charge carried by vortices, at the interface between a magnetic insulator and a superconductor, by invoking the interfacial spin Hall effect therein. We then show that a vortex liquid in superconductors can serve as a spin-transport channel between two magnetic insulators by encoding spin information in the vorticity. The vortex-mediated nonlocal signal between the two magnetic insulators is shown to decay algebraically as a function of their separation, contrasting with the exponential decay of the quasiparticle-mediated spin transport.

[1] S. K. Kim, R. Myers, and Y. Tserkovnyak, arXiv:1806.07906 (accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett.)

*This work was supported by the Army Research Office under Contract No. W911NF-14-1-0016 and the NSF-funded MRSEC under Grant No. DMR-1420451.

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Presenters

  • Se Kwon Kim

    • Physics, UCLA
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri - Columbia

Authors

  • Se Kwon Kim

    • Physics, UCLA
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri - Columbia

  • Roberto Myers

    • Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University
    • Materials Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University

  • Yaroslav Tserkovnyak

    • Univ of California - Los Angeles
    • Physics, UCLA
    • Physics, Univ of California - Los Angeles
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles
    • Physics, University of California, Los Angeles
    • University of California, Los Angeles