1303.5644 (Christian Kraglund Andersen et al.)

An effective tunneling description of voltage switching in Josephson
Junctions driven by time varying fields    [PDF]

Christian Kraglund Andersen, Klaus Mølmer

We propose to use a time dependent imaginary potential to describe quantum mechanical tunnelling through time dependent potential barriers. We use Gamow solutions for the stationary tunneling problem to justify our choice of potential, and we apply our ansatz to describe voltage switching in a driven current-biased Josephson Junction. The Josephson Junction phase variable experiences a tilted washboard potential with metastable trapped states, and our description reproduces a number of features associated with the switching dynamics of the phase variable from trapped to running states, in particular the dependence on bias current and parameters of a driving field. Our calculations also explore the potential of the fixed current-biased Josephson Junction as a field amplitude detector.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.5644