Switching Current Distributions in Josephson Junctions at Very Low Temperatures

Abstract

Swept bias experiments carried out on Josephson junctions yield the distributions of the probabilities of early switching from the zero voltage state. Kramers' theory of thermally activated escape from a one-dimensional potential is well known to fall short of explaining such experiments when the junctions are at millikelvin temperatures. We propose a simple revision of the theory which is shown to yield extremely good agreement with experimental data.

Five pages, six figures

References in corpus (8)

• High resolution measurements of the switching current in a Josephson tunnel junction: Thermal activation and macroscopic quantum tunneling
• Thermal hopping and retrapping of a Brownian particle in the tilted periodic potential of a NbN/MgO/NbN Josephson junction
• Quantum Phase Diffusion in a Small Underdamped Josephson Junction
• Decoherence in a Josephson junction qubit
• Quantum and classical resonant escapes of a strongly-driven Josephson junction
• Classical analysis of phase-locking transients and Rabi-type oscillations in microwave-driven Josephson junctions
• Is state tomography an unambiguous test of quantum entanglement?
• A classical statistical model for distributions of escape events in swept-bias Josephson junctions

Cited by in corpus (5)

• A survey of classical and quantum interpretations of experiments on Josephson junctions at very low temperatures
• Electrostatic control of phase slips in Ti Josephson nanotransistors
• Switching current distributions in ferromagnetic anomalous Josephson junctions
• Investigation of low temperature quantum crossover in Josephson junctions
• Modeling Escape from a One-Dimensional Potential Well at Zero or Very Low Temperatures