Abstract
The moderately damped regime (MDR) in a Josephson junction (JJ) is quite distinct from the well-known case of underdamped systems and quite common in devices characterized by low critical currents. Measurements of switching current distribution (SCD) are a direct way of discriminating the phase dynamics and the transport also in nontrivial cases of moderate damping. MDR is going to be more and more common with advances in nanopatterning superconductors and in materials science finalized to build hybrid devices. We report on measurements of SCDs, both in the thermal and quantum regime, on moderately damped NbN/MgO/NbN JJs. A transition from the Thermal Activation (TA) regime to Macroscopic Quantum Tunnelling (MQT) occurs at about 90 mK, while above 1.6 K a phase diffusive dynamics is clearly observed. The combined analysis of these regimes through numerical simulations allowed us to extract the fundamental parameters, which completely characterize the phase dynamics of such moderately damped JJs.
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Acknowledgements
This work is supported by MIUR PRIN 2009 under the project SuFET, Nanowire High Critical Temperature Superconductor Field-Effect Devices. We also acknowledge partial support by STREP MIDAS, Macroscopic Interference Devices for Atomic and Solid State Physics: Quantum Control of Supercurrents, and by a Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant No. 248933 hybMQC within the 7th European Community Framework Programme.
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Massarotti, D., Longobardi, L., Stornaiuolo, D. et al. Study of Phase Dynamics in Moderately Damped Josephson Junctions. J Supercond Nov Magn 26, 835–838 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10948-012-1863-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10948-012-1863-z