Nonlinearity of transparent SNS weak links decreases sharply with length
Valla Fatemi, Pavel D. Kurilovich, Anton R. Akhmerov, Bernard van Heck
SciPost Phys. 18, 091 (2025) · published 12 March 2025
- doi: 10.21468/SciPostPhys.18.3.091
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Abstract
Superconductor-normal material-superconductor (SNS) junctions are being integrated into microwave circuits for fundamental and applied research goals. The short junction limit is a common simplifying assumption for experiments with SNS junctions, but this limit constrains how small the nonlinearity of the microwave circuit can be. Here, we show that a finite length of the weak link strongly suppresses the nonlinearity compared to its zero-length limit -- the suppression can be up to a factor of ten even when the length remains shorter than the induced coherence length. We tie this behavior to the nonanalytic dependence of nonlinearity on length, which the critical current does not exhibit. Further, we identify additional experimentally observable consequences of nonzero length, and we conjecture that anharmonicity is bounded between zero and a maximally negative value for any non-interacting Josephson junction in the presence of time-reversal symmetry. We promote SNS junction length as a useful parameter for designing weakly nonlinear microwave circuits.
Authors / Affiliations: mappings to Contributors and Organizations
See all Organizations.- 1 Cornell University [CU]
- 2 Yale University
- 3 Technische Universiteit Delft / Delft University of Technology [TU Delft]
- 4 Sapienza – Università di Roma / Sapienza University of Rome
- Army Research Office (ARO) (through Organization: United States Army Research Laboratory [ARL])