Quantum phases in intrinsic Josephson junctions: Quantum magnetism analogy

We explore quantum phases in intrinsic Josephson junction (IJJ) stacks, whose in-plane area is so small that the capacitive coupling has a dominant role in the superconducting phase dynamics. In such cases, the effective Hamiltonian for the superconducting phase can be mapped onto that of one-dimensional ferromagnetically-interacting spin model, whose spin length S depends on the magnitude of the on-site Coulomb repulsion. The ferromagnetic model for IJJ's prefers synchronized quantum features in contrast to the antiferromagnetically-interacting model in the conventional Josephson junction arrays. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.