No Arabic abstract
We numerically investigate the intriguing effects produced by random percolative disorder in two-dimensional Josephson-junction arrays. By dynamic scaling analysis, we evaluate critical temperatures and critical exponents with high accuracy. It is observed that, with the introduction of site-diluted disorder, the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition is eliminated and evolves into a continuous transition with power-law divergent correlation length. Moreover, genuine depinning transition and creep motion are studied, evidence for distinct creep motion types is provided. Our results not only are in good agreement with the recent experimental findings, but also shed some light on the relevant phase transitions.
We study the dynamic response to external currents of periodic arrays of Josephson junctions, in a resistively capacitively shunted junction (RCSJ) model, including full capacitance-matrix effects}. We define and study three different models of the capacitance matrix $C_{vec{r},vec{r}}$: Model A includes only mutual capacitances; Model B includes mutual and self capacitances, leading to exponential screening of the electrostatic fields; Model C includes a dense matrix $C_{vec{r},vec{r}}$ that is constructed approximately from superposition of an exact analytic solution for the capacitance between two disks of finite radius and thickness. In the latter case the electrostatic fields decay algebraically. For comparison, we have also evaluated the full capacitance matrix using the MIT fastcap algorithm, good for small lattices, as well as a corresponding continuum effective-medium analytic evaluation of a finite voltage disk inside a zero-potential plane. In all cases the effective $C_{vec{r},vec{r}}$ decays algebraically with distance, with different powers. We have then calculated current voltage characteristics for DC+AC currents for all models. We find that there are novel giant capacitive fractional steps in the I-Vs for Models B and C, strongly dependent on the amount of screening involved. We find that these fractional steps are quantized in units inversely proportional to the lattice sizes and depend on the properties of $C_{vec{r},vec{r}}$. We also show that the capacitive steps are not related to vortex oscillations but to localized screened phase-locking of a few rows in the lattice. The possible experimental relevance of these results is also discussed.
We present general symmetry arguments that show the appearance of doubly denerate states protected from external perturbations in a wide class of Hamiltonians. We construct the simplest spin Hamiltonian belonging to this class and study its properties both analytically and numerically. We find that this model generally has a number of low energy modes which might destroy the protection in the thermodynamic limit. These modes are qualitatively different from the usual gapless excitations as their number scales as the linear size (instead of volume) of the system. We show that the Hamiltonians with this symmetry can be physically implemented in Josephson junction arrays and that in these arrays one can eliminate the low energy modes with a proper boundary condition. We argue that these arrays provide fault tolerant quantum bits. Further we show that the simplest spin model with this symmetry can be mapped to a very special Z_2 Chern-Simons model on the square lattice. We argue that appearance of the low energy modes and the protected degeneracy is a natural property of lattice Chern-Simons theories. Finally, we discuss a general formalism for the construction of discrete Chern-Simons theories on a lattice.
In this work we study the magnetic remanence exhibited by Josephson junction arrays in response to an excitation with an AC magnetic field. The effect, predicted by numerical simulations to occur in a range of temperatures, is clearly seen in our tridimensional disordered arrays. We also discuss the influence of the critical current distribution on the temperature interval within which the array develops a magnetic remanence. This effect can be used to determine the critical current distribution of an array.
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 $Vpropto 1/I$. 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.
As the size of a Josephson junction is reduced, charging effects become important and the superconducting phase across the link turns into a periodic quantum variable. Isolated Josephson junction arrays are described in terms of such periodic quantum variables and thus exhibit pronounced quantum interference effects arising from paths with different winding numbers (Aharonov-Casher effects). These interference effects have strong implications for the excitation spectrum of the array which are relevant in applications of superconducting junction arrays for quantum computing. The interference effects are most pronounced in arrays composed of identical junctions and possessing geometric symmetries; they may be controlled by either external gate potentials or by adding/removing charge to/from the array. Here we consider a loop of N identical junctions encircling one half superconducting quantum of magnetic flux. In this system, the ground state is found to be non-degenerate if the total number of Cooper pairs on the array is divisible by N, and doubly degenerate otherwise (after the stray charges are compensated by the gate voltages).