โ Scribed by Gert-Ludwig Ingold; Hermann Grabert
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
In ultrasmall Josephson junctions where the charging energy exceeds the Josephson coupling energy, the usual supercurrent at zero voltage is completely suppressed. However, in the presence of environmental modes, stochastic tunneling of Cooper pairs leads to a current through the junction. For any standard environmental impedances one finds a peak in the current-voltage characteristics near a small voltage proportional to the temperature and the low frequency resistance of the environment. The form of this universal peak, which is independent of the high frequency behavior of the environment, is given analytically. With increasing Josephson coupling the peak merges into the normal supercurrent of a Josephson junction.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
When two superconductors are connected by a weak link a supercurrent flows determined by the difference in the macroscopic quantum phases of the superconductors. Originally, this phenomenon was discovered by Josephson [1] for the case of a weak link formed by a thin tunnel barrier. The supercurrent