Semifluxons in superconductivity and cold atomic gases

Abstract

Josephson junctions (JJs) and junction arrays are well-studied devices in superconductivity. With external magnetic fields one can modulate the phase in a long junction and create traveling, solitonic waves of magnetic flux, called fluxons. Today, it is also possible to devise two different types of junctions: depending on the sign of the critical current density , they are called 0- or π-junctions. In turn, a 0–π junction is formed by joining two of these junctions. As a result, one obtains a pinned Josephson vortex of fractional magnetic flux, at the 0–π boundary. Here, we analyze this arrangement of superconducting junctions in the context of an atomic bosonic quantum gas, where two-state atoms in a double well trap are coupled in an analogous fashion. There, an all-optical 0–π JJ is created by the phase of a complex valued Rabi frequency and we derive a discrete four-mode model for this situation, which qualitatively resembles a semifluxon.