Critical temperature of superconductor/ferromagnet bilayers

Superconductor/ferromagnet bilayers are known to exhibit nontrivial depende nce of the critical temperature T-c on the thickness d(f) of the ferromagne tic layer. We develop a general method for investigation of T-c as a functi on of the bilayer parameters. It is shown that interference of quasiparticl es makes T-c(d(f) ) a nonmonotonic function. The results are in good agreem ent with experiment. Our method also applies to multilayered structures. (C ) 2001 MAIK "Nauka/Interperiodica".