Subharmonic Gap Structure in Superconductor/Ferromagnet/Superconductor Junctions

Abstract

The behavior of dc subgap current in magnetic quantum point contact is discussed for the case of low-transparency junction with different tunnel probabilities for spin-up ($D_\uparrow$) and spin-down ($D_\downarrow$) electrons. Due to the presence of Andreev bound states $\pm ε_0$ in the system the positions of subgap electric current steps $eV_n = (Δ\pm ε_0)/n$ are split at temperature $T \neq 0$ with respect to the nonmagnetic result $eV_n=2Δ/n$. It is found that under the condition $D_\uparrow \neq D_\downarrow$ the spin current also manifests subgap structure, but only for odd values of $n$. The split steps corresponding to $n=1,2$ in subgap electric and spin currents are analytically calculated and the following steps are described qualitatively.