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PUBLICATIONS

Modeling Bloch Oscillations in Nanoscale Josephson Junctions

Published

Author(s)

Heli C. Vora, Richard Kautz, Sae Woo Nam, Jose A. Aumentado

Abstract

Bloch oscillations in nanoscale Josephson junctions with a Coulomb charging energy comparable to the Josephson coupling energy are explored within the context of a model previously considered by Geigenmüller and Schön that includes Zener tunneling and treats quasiparticle tunneling as an explicit shot-noise process. The dynamics of the junction quasicharge are investigated numerically using both Monte-Carlo and ensemble approaches to calculate voltage--current characteristics in the presence of microwaves. We examine in detail the origin of harmonic and subharmonic Bloch steps at dc biases I=(n/m)ef induced by microwaves of frequency f and consider the optimum parameters for the observation of harmonic (m=1) steps. We also demonstrate that the GS model allows a detailed semi-quantitative fit to experimental voltage--current characteristics previously obtained at the Chalmers Institute of Technology, confirming and strengthening the interpretation of the observed microwave-induced steps in terms of Bloch oscillations.
Citation
Physical Review B
Volume
96
Pub Type
Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.054505

Keywords

Josephson Junctions, Bloch Oscillations, Coulomb Blockade, Current Standard, Tunneling, Superconductivity
Condensed matter

Citation

Vora, H. , Kautz, R. , Nam, S. and Aumentado, J. (2017), Modeling Bloch Oscillations in Nanoscale Josephson Junctions, Physical Review B, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.054505 (Accessed October 8, 2025)

Issues

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Created August 7, 2017, Updated November 10, 2018
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