LAUSR

A study of the density of quasiparticle states of a lead film, which is a conventional superconductor with spin-singlet electron pairing, as a function of the nanoscale ferromagnetic nickel layer thickness that is in direct contact with the lead (inverse proximity effect). It is found that the penetration depth of superconducting correlations into the ferromagnetic nickel is of the same order of magnitude as in contacts involving lead and a normal metal. This behavior can be explained by the appearance of an inhomogeneous exchange field at the interface, which leads to the effective conversion of spin-singlet (rapidly decaying in a ferromagnet) Cooper pairs into spin-triplet pairs, which are stable with respect to exchange interaction.