Effects of Rashba spin-orbit coupling interface on the orientation-dependent conductance in ferromagnet/spin-triplet superconductor junction (Q468059)

The paper extends the Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk (BTK) formalism to study the transport properties of a ferromagnet/spin-triplet superconductor (F/TS) junction with a Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling (RSOC) interface. The paper clarifies the effects of the RSOC interface on the orientation-dependent conductance in the F/TS junction with the d-vector parallel to the c-axis. The authors consider a two-dimensional F/TS junction with semi-infinite electrode in the clean limit. The effective Hamiltonian of the junction for the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equation is obtained in the coordinate of the spin space in F by performing a unitary transformation. As a result, the gap matrix and the interface potential matrix are found. Both matrices depend on the polar angle of the magnetization in F, but are independent of the azimuthal angle. The dependence of the interface potential on the polar angle is a result of the presence of the interfacial RSOC. In the analysis, the authors do not take into account the Fermi wave-vector mismatch between F and TS. The normalized tunneling conductance is written according to the BTK formalism for a given bias in the form of a function of the polar angle, the magnitude of the magnetization and the interface barrier heights. It is shown that the RSOC interface can provide spin-flip, spin-mixing or spin-filtering mechanism depending on the orientation of the magnetic moment. The symmetry of the spectra about the polar angle in the F/TS junction without RSOC is broken. The authors calculate the conductance for various values of the angle and they are compared with that in the same junction without RSOC. For each angle, the authors analyze the spin-active mechanism provided by the RSOC interface employing the interfacial potential matrix expressed in the coordinate of the spin space in F. The influence of the spin polarization on the conductance in the presence of the RSOC is also considered.