English

AC Josephson effect without superconductivity

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2015-07-10 v1

Abstract

Superconductivity derives its most salient features from the coherence of its macroscopic wave function. The associated physical phenomena have now moved from exotic subjects to fundamental building blocks for quantum circuits such as qubits or single photonic modes. Here, we theoretically find that the AC Josephson effect---which transforms a DC voltage VbV_b into an oscillating signal cos(2eVbt/)cos(2eV_b t/ \hbar)---has a mesoscopic counterpart in normal conductors. We show that on applying a DC voltage VbV_b to an electronic interferometer, there exists a universal transient regime where the current oscillates at frequency eVb/heV_b/h. This effect is not limited by a superconducting gap and could, in principle, be used to produce tunable AC signals in the elusive 0.1100.1-10 THz "terahertz gap".

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1407.3911,
  title  = {AC Josephson effect without superconductivity},
  author = {Benoit Gaury and Joseph Weston and Xavier Waintal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.3911},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4 pages, 2 figures, 5 equations

R2 v1 2026-06-22T05:04:15.436Z