Superconductor-insulator transition in Josephson junction chains by quantum Monte Carlo calculations

• Authors: BASKO D. M.; PFEIFFER Frederik; ADAMUS Petr; HOLZMANN M.; HEKKING F. W. J.
• Year of publication: 2020
• Type: Article in Periodical
• Magazine / Source: Physical Review B
• MU Faculty or unit: Faculty of Science
• Web: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.101.024518
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.101.024518
• Keywords: Coulomb blockade; Mott-superfluid transition; Superconductor-insulator transition; XY model
• Description: We study the zero-temperature phase diagram of a dissipationless and disorder-free Josephson junction chain. Namely, we determine the critical Josephson energy below which the chain becomes insulating as a function of the ratio of two capacitances: the capacitance of each Josephson junction and the capacitance between each superconducting island and the ground. We develop an imaginary-time path integral quantum Monte Carlo algorithm in the charge representation, which enables us to efficiently handle the electrostatic part of the chain Hamiltonian. We find that a large part of the phase diagram is determined by anharmonic corrections which are not captured by the standard Kosterlitz-Thouless renormalization group description of the transition.

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