Superconducting spin valves based on antiferromagnet/superconductor/antiferromagnet heterostructures

Proximity effect at superconductor/antiferromagnet (S/AF) interfaces, which manifests itself as generation of N\'eel-type triplet correlations, leads to sensitivity of the superconducting critical temperature to the mutual orientation of the AF N\'eel vectors in AF/S/AF trilayers, which is called the spin-valve effect. Here we predict that the spin-valve effect in AF/S/AF heterostructures crucially depends on the value of the chemical potential of the superconducting interlayer due to the occurrence of the finite-momentum N\'eel triplet correlations. In addition, we investigate equal-spin-triplet correlations, which appear in AF/S/AF structures for nonaligned N\'eel vectors of the AFs, and their role in the nonmonotonic dependence of the superconducting critical temperature of the AF/S/AF structure on the mutual orientation of the AF N\'eel vectors. The influence of impurities on the spin-valve effect is also investigated.