Charge imbalance and Josephson effects in superconductor-normal metal mesoscopic structures

Abstract

We consider a $SBS$ Josephson junction the superconducting electrodes $S$ of which are in contact with normal metal reservoirs ($B$ means a barrier). For temperatures near $T_c$ we calculate an effective critical current and the resistance of the system at the currents $I<$ and $I>>I_c^{\ast }$. It is found that the charge imbalance, which arises due to injection of quasiparticles from the $N$ reservoirs into the $S$ wire, affects essentially the characteristics of the structure. The effective critical current $I_c^{\ast }$ is always larger than the critical current $I_c$ in the absence of the normal reservoirs and increases with decreasing the ratio of the length of the $S$ wire $2L$ to the charge imbalance relaxation length $l_Q$. It is shown that a series of peaks arises on the $I-V$ characteristics due to excitation of the Carlson-Goldman collective modes. We find the position of Shapiro steps which deviates from that given by the Josephson relation.

arXiv comment12 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Dynamic properties of asymmetric double Josephson junction stack with quasiparticle imbalance
• Stationary Charge Imbalance Effect in System of Coupled Josephson Junction