Transport and triplet superconducting condensate in mesoscopic ferromagnet-superconductor structures

Abstract

We calculate the conductance of a superconductor/ferromagnet (S/F) mesoscopic structure in the dirty limit. First we assume that the ferromagnet exhibits a homogeneous magnetization and consider the case that the penetration of the condensate into the F wire is negligible and the case in which the proximity effect is taken into account. It is shown that if the exchange field is large enough, the conductance below the critical temperature $T_C$, is always smaller than the conductance in the normal state. At last, we calculate the conductance for a F/S structure with a local inhomogeneity of the magnetization in the ferromagnet. We demonstrate that a triplet component of the condensate is induced in the F wire.This leads to a increase of the conductance below $T_C$.