Superconducting diode effect in magnetic superconductors realized by nonreciprocal domain-wall dynamics

Abstract

A superconducting diode effect is shown to arise in ferromagnetic superconductors through the nonreciprocal dynamics of magnetic domain walls. Specifically, we show that current-driven dynamics of a magnetic domain wall under a certain external field can exhibit a nonreciprocal Walker breakdown, possessing two distinct direction-dependent critical currents beyond which the domain wall precesses continuously. In ferromagnetic superconductors, the constant rotation of a domain wall is shown to give rise to phase slips, opening up dissipation channels, whereby the nonreciprocal Walker breakdown is mapped to the superconducting diode effect. For the nonreciprocal Walker breakdown of a magnetic domain wall, we analytically examine its dependence on the magnetic field and the Gilbert damping and verify the theoretical results with micromagnetic simulations. We then extend the analysis to ferromagnetic superconductors by considering additional effects from the superconductivity and identify criteria for experimental conditions to realize the predicted superconducting diode effect. Our work demonstrates that topological defects, such as domain walls, in magnetic superconductors can serve as an intrinsic nanoscale platform for nonlinear nonreciprocal superconducting functionalities within a single homogeneous material, circumventing the need for complicated engineered heterostructures and thereby enabling the miniaturization of superconducting devices down to the nanometer scale that is challenging to achieve with conventional Josephson junctions.