Transport through ferromagnet-superconductor contacts

Rapid advances in nanofabrication techniques have made it possible to create high quality ferromagnet-superconductor heterostructures. Apart from potential device applications, a variety of fundamental physical phenomena make such structures interesting both from the experimental and theoretical point of view. The behavior of hybrid ferromagnet-superconductor devices is largely determined by the phenomena proximity effect and Andreev scattering. In the present work, we make use of the quasiclassical theory of superconductivity in order to study Andreev reflection processes at ferromagnet-superconductor interfaces. We address the role that impurities play in the phenomenon of crossed Anreev reflection