Unified formalism of Andreev reflection at a ferromagnet/superconductor interface.

We present a unified formalism of Andreev reflection of a partial polarized current at a ferromagnet/superconductor interface instead of assuming a linear combination of unpolarized and polarized currents. The Andreev reflection is limited by the states of minority spins and the extra majority spins become evanescent wave. We further study the effects of spin polarization, inelastic scattering, and interfacial scattering on the Andreev reflection, normal reflection, and transmitted probabilities in equilibrium as well as under a bias. Our model, which reduces to those of Blonder, Tinkham, and Klapwijk, Mazin, and Dynes in three limiting cases, provides a significantly better description of the experimental results.