Long-range supercurrents through a chiral non-collinear antiferromagnet in lateral Josephson junctions.

ABSTRACT

The proximity-coupling of a chiral non-collinear antiferromagnet (AFM)1-5 with a singlet superconductor allows spin-unpolarized singlet Cooper pairs to be converted into spin-polarized triplet pairs6-8, thereby enabling non-dissipative, long-range spin correlations9-14. The mechanism of this conversion derives from fictitious magnetic fields that are created by a non-zero Berry phase15 in AFMs with non-collinear atomic-scale spin arrangements1-5. Here we report long-ranged lateral Josephson supercurrents through an epitaxial thin film of the triangular chiral AFM Mn3Ge (refs. 3-5). The Josephson supercurrents in this chiral AFM decay by approximately one to two orders of magnitude slower than would be expected for singlet pair correlations9-14 and their response to an external magnetic field reflects a clear spatial quantum interference. Given the long-range supercurrents present in both single- and mixed-phase Mn3Ge, but absent in a collinear AFM IrMn16, our results pave a way for the topological generation of spin-polarized triplet pairs6-8 via Berry phase engineering15 of the chiral AFMs.