Electronic and thermal sequential transport in metallic and superconducting two-junction arrays

Abstract

The description of transport phenomena in devices consisting of arrays of tunnel junctions, and the experimental confirmation of these predictions is one of the great successes of mesoscopic physics. The aim of this paper is to give a self-consistent review of sequential transport processes in such devices, based on the so-called "orthodox" model. We calculate numerically the current-voltage (I-V) curves, the conductance versus bias voltage (G-V) curves, and the associated thermal transport in symmetric and asymmetric two-junction arrays such as Coulomb-blockade thermometers (CBTs), superconducting-insulator-normal-insulator-superconducting (SINIS) structures, and superconducting single-electron transistors (SETs). We investigate the behavior of these systems at the singularity-matching bias points, the dependence of microrefrigeration effects on the charging energy of the island, and the effect of a finite superconducting gap on Coulomb-blockade thermometry.

23 pages, 12 figures; Berlin (ISBN: 978-3-642-12069-5)

References in corpus (7)

• Superconducting Circuits and Quantum Information
• Entanglement of superconducting qubits via microwave fields: classical and quantum regimes
• Interaction-free measurements with superconducting qubits
• Suspended single-electron transistors: fabrication and measurement
• Thin-Film Metamaterials called Sculptured Thin Films
• Effects of charging energy on SINIS tunnel junction thermometry
• Method for finding the critical temperature of the island in a SET structure