Giant enhancement to spin battery effect in superconductor/ferromagnetic insulator systems

Abstract

We develop a theory of the spin battery effect in superconductor/ferromagnetic insulator (SC/FI) systems taking into account the magnetic proximity effect. We demonstrate that the spin-energy mixing enabled by the superconductivity leads to the enhancement of spin accumulation by several orders of magnitude relative to the normal state. This finding can explain the recently observed giant inverse spin Hall effect generated by thermal magnons in the SC/FI system. We suggest a nonlocal electrical detection scheme which can directly probe the spin accumulation driven by the magnetization dynamics. We predict a giant Seebeck effect converting the magnon temperature bias into the nonlocal voltage signal. We also show how this can be used to enhance the sensitivity of magnon detection even up to the single-magnon level.