Domain Wall Steers the Current express

Original: "Josephson coupling through a magnetic racetrack"
· A. A. Mazanik, F. S. Bergeret
arXiv:2604.12742 · 2026-04-14 · CC BY 4.0 · 1 min
A magnetic 'fold' inside a nanowire turns a superconducting current like a rudder.

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Two superconducting banks are connected by a bridge of magnetic material. Inside the bridge lies a domain wall: a narrow boundary where the magnetization rotates, like a column of soldiers changing their marching direction. The current flowing through such a bridge behaves not like a calm river but like a stream bending around an obstacle: it curls into loops and changes its strength.

The authors calculated that shifting the wall along the track, even by fractions of a micron, noticeably changes the critical current. At certain positions, the current transitions from the ordinary mode to a 'flipped' one, where the superconducting phase shifts by half a period. Such sensitivity turns the domain wall into a control knob: no external magnets or additional contacts are needed.

A domain wall in a ferromagnet is only a few atoms thick, but its influence on the supercurrent is comparable to that of an entire material layer.

This matters for racetrack memory: domain walls already store bits, and now they can also be read by the same current that moves the data. The device becomes simpler and more compact — one and the same path serves as both carrier and detector.

Original abstract

as written by the authors arXiv:2604.12742

We investigate the Josephson coupling between two superconducting electrodes connected by a ferromagnetic racetrack hosting a Bloch-like domain wall (DW). We show that the interplay between superconductivity and the DW leads to highly non-trivial spatial distributions of the supercurrent, including the formation of current loops and a strong sensitivity to the DW position and orientation. We further demonstrate that the Josephson critical current $$I_c$$ can be efficiently controlled by the DW position along the racetrack, exhibiting pronounced variations and tunable $$0$$--$$\pi$$ transitions. These results provide clear design principles for superconducting racetrack devices and establish domain walls as a viable control element for readout schemes in racetrack memory architectures.

A domain wall can be thinner than ten nanometers — about a thousand times thinner than a human hair.

Scientists
Klaus von KlitzingLev LandauJohn Bardeen
Concepts
josephson current Josephson effect domain wall triplet superconductivity magnetic domain dynamics superconducting magnet superconducting loop magnetic superconductivity critical current transmon qubit Cooper pair exchange coupling electron pairing flux pinning Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction magnetic superconductivity coupling conductor aluminum oxide zero resistance electron pairs