New Experiments for Spontaneous Vortex Formation in Josephson Tunnel Junctions
It has been argued by Zurek and Kibble that the likelihood of producing defects in a continuous phase transition depends in a characteristic way on the quench rate. In this paper we discuss an improved experiment for measuring the Zurek-Kibble scaling exponent $σ$ for the production of fluxons in annular symmetric Josephson Tunnel Junctions. We find $σ\simeq 0.5$. Further, we report accurate measurements of the junction gap voltage temperature dependence which allow for precise monitoring of the fast temperature variations during the quench.
cond-mat.supr-con↗