Transition from the 0 state to the $\pi$ state in S-FNF-S Josephson structures

The critical current I _C of S-FNF-S Josephson structures has been calculated as a function of the distance between the superconducting (S) electrodes, L, via the Usadel semiclassical equations for the case of specifying the supercurrent in the direction parallel to the interface between the ferromagnetic (F) and normal (N) films of the composite weak-link region. It has been shown that, owing to the interaction between the F and N films, both the typical decrease scale of the critical current and the period of its oscillations to lengths of the scale ξ_N can be much larger than the respective quantities for the SFS junctions. Moreover, this interaction changes both the magnitude and sign of the critical current. It has been shown that the critical current in a structure with the collinear magnetization vectors of the films can be significantly different from the critical current in a structure with the antiparallel magnetization of the F films.