skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Instability of superconducting state in Josephson tunnel junctions

Journal Article · · Sov. Phys. - Solid State (Engl. Transl.); (United States)
OSTI ID:6610925

Experiments on low-resistance Josephson Sn--I--Sn tunnel junctions have shown the superconductor to exhibit an instability that manifests itself on the current--voltage characteristic (IVC) in the form of a jumplike decrease of the voltage when it reaches a value 2..delta../e. When a weak magnetic field H is applied parallel to the junction plane and suppresses the nonstationary Josephson effect, the negative-slope IVC section vanishes. The H-dependent instability-current component, as well as the dc component of the Josephson current near 2..delta../e, can be approximated by a function of H/sup -2/. The singularity observed is attributed to the presence of a maximum of the superconducting component, due to the Riedel singularity, at V = 2..delta../e.

Research Organization:
Institute of Metal Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Kiev
OSTI ID:
6610925
Journal Information:
Sov. Phys. - Solid State (Engl. Transl.); (United States), Vol. 26:2
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English