Magnetism via superconductivity in SF proximity structures

Abstract

We consider the proximity effects in hybrid superconductor (S) - ferromagnet (F) structures drawing attention to the induced ferromagnetism of the S metal. The analysis is based on a quasiclassical theory of proximity effect for metals in the dirty limit conditions. It is shown that, below the superconducting critical temperature, ferromagnetic correlations extend a distance of order of the superconducting coherence length ξ_{S} into the superconductor, being dependent on the S/F interface parameters. We argue that the properties of mesoscopic SF hybrids may drastically depend upon the magnetic proximity effect, and recent experiments lend support to the model of SF structures where the superconducting and magnetic parameters are tightly coupled.