Eur. Phys. J. B 63, 65-69 (2008)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2008-00220-0

Charge transport through ferromagnet/two-dimensional electron gas/d-wave superconductor junctions with Rashba spin-orbit coupling

Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, P.R. China

Corresponding author: ^a zyzhang@nju.edu.cn

Received: 19 February 2008
Revised: 28 April 2008
Published online: 6 June 2008

Abstract

Along the lines of Blonder, Tinkham and Klapwijk, we investigate the charge transport through ferromagnet/two-dimensional electronic gas/d-wave superconductor (F/2DEG/S) junctions in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit (SO) coupling and focus our attention on the interplay between spin polarization and spin precession. At zero spin polarization, the spin-mixing scattering resulted from Rashba SO coupling decreases the zero-bias conductance peak. Under spin polarization, spin precession introduces novel Andreev reflection, which competes with the effect of spin-mixing scattering. If the F layer is a half metal, the later effect is overwhelmed by that of novel Andreev reflection. As a result, the zero-bias conductance dip caused by spin polarization is enhanced, and at strong Rashba SO coupling, a split zero-bias peak is found in the gap. In an intermediate region where the two effects are comparable with each other, the zero-bias conductance shows a reentrant behavior as a function of Rashba SO coupling.