Superconducting Proximity Effect and Long-Ranged Triplets in Dirty Metallic Antiferromagnets

Abstract

Antiferromagnets have no net spin splitting on the scale of the superconducting coherence length. Despite this, antiferromagnets have been observed to suppress superconductivity in a similar way as ferromagnets, a phenomenon that still lacks a clear understanding. We find that this effect can be explained by the role of impurities in antiferromagnets. Using quasiclassical Green’s functions, we study the proximity effect and critical temperature in diffusive superconductor-metallic antiferromagnet bilayers. The nonmagnetic impurities acquire an effective magnetic component in the antiferromagnet. This not only reduces the critical temperature but also separates the superconducting correlations into short-ranged and long-ranged components, similar to ferromagnetic proximity systems.