Josephson effect in strongly disordered metallic wires
We study localization effects in Josephson junctions with two superconductors connected by a strongly disordered metallic wire of length $L$. The conventional description of the Josephson effect in such systems, based on the quasiclassical Usadel equation, neglects electron interference and is only applicable when $L$ is shorter than the localization length $ξ$ in the wire. We develop a more general theory for the Josephson effect using the non-linear sigma model that fully accounts for electron interference, and hence localization. We show that for $L \gg ξ$, three qualitatively different regimes of the Josephson current arise depending on the ratio of the superconducting order parameter $Δ$ and the mean level spacing in the localization volume $Δ_ξ$. We derive the average supercurrent as a function of the phase difference for all three regimes. Quite unexpectedly, we observe that the Ambegaokar-Baratoff relation between the average critical current and the normal-state conductance still holds in the strongly localized state when $Δ_ξ\gg Δ$ and $ξ\ll L \ll (ξ/π^2) \ln^2(Δ_ξ/Δ)$.