Abstract
The resistance and magnetization behavior of [ferromagnetic (FM)/superconducting (SC)/ferromagnetic (FM)] trilayers of the type was experimentally analyzed and related to their superconducting transition temperature . As opposed to what is expected by proximity effect theory, exhibited a minimum in case of an antiparallel relative orientation of the magnetization of the two sandwiching FM layers. Though this result is consistent with the predictions of spin-imbalance theory, additional experiments on exchange-biased systems revealed strong changes, even for a fixed relative magnetization orientation of the FM layers pointing to stray fields, rather than magnetization orientations, as causing the observed shifts. This idea is corroborated by additional measurements on and bilayers, which clearly show changes related to specific magnetic domain configurations with a maximum in the magnetically saturated state of the FM layer. Complementary micromagnetic simulations, delivering also the magnitude of stray fields, support the picture of influencing by controlling and switching domain configurations.
3 More- Received 7 April 2006
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.74.094504
©2006 American Physical Society