Electronics with superconducting junctions

AUG 01, 1971

As ultracold becomes easier to maintain, highly sensitive devices based on the Josephson effects may find wider and wider use to measure tiny high‐frequency voltages and magnetic fields.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3022881

John Clarke

Josephson tunneling, an effect predicted and discovered within the last decade, has already formed the basis of a new technology. The “Josephson devices” are ultrasensitive electronic measuring devices that operate at liquid‐helium temperatures (1–4K) and exploit the macroscopic‐scale quantum properties of superconducting junctions. They have been used to measure, for example, smaller low‐frequency voltages and magnetic fields than can be measured with any other methods, and are also being investigated as possible high‐frequency detectors and mixers, as thermometers and as computer elements. One of the most important applications of the Josephson effect has been in the precision measurement of $e/h$ in an experiment that avoids any assumptions from quantum electrodynamics (QED); results from this experiment give a convenient and accurate way to express the standard of electromotive force.

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More about the Authors

John Clarke. University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Berkeley.