Thermal escape from a metastable state in periodically driven Josephson junctions

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2007 Feb;75(2 Pt 1):021107. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.75.021107. Epub 2007 Feb 9.

Abstract

Resonant activation and noise-enhanced stability were observed in an underdamped real physical system, i.e., Josephson tunnel junctions. With a weak sinusoidal driving force applied, the thermal activated escape from a potential well underwent resonancelike behaviors as a function of the driving frequency. The resonances also crucially depended on the initial condition of the system. Numerical simulations showed good agreement with the experimental results.