Stability of the McCumber curve for long Josephson tunnel junctions

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The stability of the McCumber solution of the perturbed sine-Gordon equation that describes the dynamics of a long Josephson junction may conveniently be studied within the context of a Fourier-Galerkin approximation. In the absence of an externally applied magnetic field, this procedure predicts analytically how the number, locations, and widths of the unstable regions of the McCumber curve depend on the junction parameters. These instabilities are of physical interest because they evolve into the fluxon oscillations associated with zero-field steps. In the presence of a small applied magnetic field, the same procedure provides a technique for studying Fiske steps.