Parity Effect and Charge Binding Transition in Submicron Josephson Junction Arrays

Abstract

We reconsider the issue of Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition into an insulating state in the Coulomb-dominated Josephson junction arrays. We show that previously predicted picture of the Cooper-pair BKT transtion at T = T_2 is valid only under the condition that T_2 is considerably below the parity-effect temperature (which is usually almost 10 times below the value of superconductive transition temperature), and even in this case it is not a rigorous phase transition but only a crossover, whereas the real phase transition takes place at T_1 = T_2/4. Our theory is in agreement with available experimental data on Coulomb-dominated Josephson arrays and also sheds some light on the origin of unusual reentrant temperature dependence of resistivity in the array with nearly-criticial ratio of Coulomb to Josephson energies.

4 pages, Revtex, to be published in JETP Letters, April 97

References in corpus (1)

• Parity Fluctuations Between Coulomb Blockaded Superconducting Islands

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Quantum Phase Transitions and Vortex Dynamics in Superconducting Networks
• Fractal superconductivity near localization threshold
• The parity effect in Josephson junction arrays
• Parity effect and single-electron injection for Josephson-junction chains deep in the insulating state
• Insulating Phase in Two-dimensional Josephson-Junction Arrays Investigated by Nonlinear Transport