Ferromagnetic proximity effect in a ferromagnet-quantum-dot-superconductor device

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Jun 18;104(24):246804. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.246804. Epub 2010 Jun 18.

Abstract

The ferromagnetic proximity effect is studied in InAs nanowire based quantum dots strongly coupled to a ferromagnetic (F) and a superconducting (S) lead. The influence of the F lead is detected through the splitting of the spin-1/2 Kondo resonance. We show that the F lead induces a local exchange field on the quantum dot, which has varying amplitude and sign depending on the charge states. The interplay of the F and S correlations generates an exchange field related subgap feature.