2005/04/20 by E. Goldobin, Karl Vogel, K. Vogel +6 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.72.054527
published as Phys. Rev. B. 72, 054527 (2005) · submitted to PRB, comments/questions are welcome
arxiv created 2005/04/20 · openalex publication_date 2005/08/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We consider a system of two semifluxons of opposite polarity in a 0\text\ensuremath-\ensuremathπ\text\ensuremath-0 long Josephson junction, which classically can be in one of two degenerate states: \ensuremath\uparrow\ensuremath\downarrow or \ensuremath\downarrow\ensuremath\uparrow. When the distance a between the 0\text\ensuremath-\ensuremathπ boundaries (semifluxon's centers) is a bit larger than the crossover distance ac, the system can switch from one state to the other due to thermal fluctuations or quantum tunneling. We map this problem to the dynamics of a single particle in a double well potential and estimate parameters for which quantum effects emerge. We also determine the classical-to-quantum crossover temperature as well as the tunneling rate (energy level splitting) between the states \ensuremath\uparrow\ensuremath\downarrow and \ensuremath\downarrow\ensuremath\uparrow.