Evidence for nonlocal electrodynamics in planar Josephson junctions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the temperature-dependent behavior of critical current modulation in planar Josephson junctions, revealing a transition from local to nonlocal electrodynamics as temperature increases.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence for nonlocal electrodynamics in Josephson junctions and identifies the crossover point related to London penetration depth.

Findings

Critical current modulation field deltaH becomes T-independent at high T.

Neither deltaH nor the vortex penetration field vanish at Tc.

Crossover from local to nonlocal electrodynamics occurs when London penetration depth exceeds electrode thickness.

Abstract

We study temperature dependence of the critical current modulation Ic(H) for two types of planar Josephson junctions: a low-Tc Nb/CuNi/Nb and a high-Tc YBa2Cu3O7 bicrystal grain-boundary junction. At low T both junctions exhibit a conventional behavior, described by the local sine-Gordon equation. However, at elevated T the behavior becomes qualitatively different: the Ic(H) modulation field deltaH becomes almost T-independent and neither deltaH nor the critical field for penetration of Josephson vortices vanish at Tc. Such an unusual behavior is in good agreement with theoretical predictions for junctions with nonlocal electrodynamics. We extract absolute values of the London penetration depth from our data and show that a crossover from local to nonlocal electrodynamics occurs with increasing T when London penetration depth becomes larger than the electrode thickness.