Josephson current in superconductor/ferromagnet/ superconductor junctions

The Bogoliubov-de Gennes equation and Nambu spinor Green's function approach are applied to studying the Josephson current in superconductor/ferromagnet/superconductor (S/F/S) Josephson junctions in the clean limit. It is found that the critical current exhibits a damped oscillation with the F thickness d, the oscillation period equal to 2πξ<Subscript>F</Subscript> with ξ<Subscript>F</Subscript> the coherence length of the F. The change of the critical current from positive to negative is determined by factor cosφ<Superscript>′</Superscript> with φ<Superscript>′</Superscript>=d/ξ<Subscript>F</Subscript> as the F-induced phase difference. The exponent decay of the critical current is close related to that of the superconductor order parameter in the F, both of them having the same decay length. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2005