Voltage-Current curves for small Josephson junction arrays

Benoît Douçot (1) , Lev B. Ioffe (2)

1 LPTHE - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Hautes Energies
2 Center for Materials Theory [Piscataway]

We compute the current voltage characteristic of a chain of identical Josephson circuits characterized by a large ratio of Josephson to charging energy that are envisioned as the implementation of topologically protected qubits. We show that in the limit of small coupling to the environment it exhibits a non-monotonous behavior with a maximum voltage followed by a parametrically large region where $V\propto 1/I$. We argue that its experimental measurement provides a direct probe of the amplitude of the quantum transitions in constituting Josephson circuits and thus allows their full characterization.

Domaines: Supraconductivité [cond-mat.supr-con]; Systèmes mésoscopiques et effet Hall quantique [cond-mat.mes-hall]

Benoît Douçot, Lev B. Ioffe. Voltage-Current curves for small Josephson junction arrays. 2007. ⟨hal-00170755⟩