Magnetic impurities in a superconductor: Effect of domain walls and interference

Abstract

We consider the effect of magnetic impurities, modeled by classical spins, in a conventional superconductor. We study their effect on the quasiparticles, specifically on the spin density and local density of states (LDOS). As previously emphasized, the impurities induce multiple scatterings of the quasiparticle wave functions leading to complex interference phenomena. Also, the impurities induce quantum phase transitions in the many-body system. Previous authors studied the effect of either a small number of impurities (from one to three) or a finite concentration of impurities, typically in a disordered distribution. In this work we assume a regular set of spins distributed inside the superconductor in such a way that the spins are oriented, forming different types of domain walls, assumed stable. This situation may be particularly interesting in the context of spin transfer due to polarized currents traversing the material.