Illustrated Physics
physics, drawn
Concept

Phase coherence — where it appears

The property of waves or quantum states whose phases keep a fixed relationship over time or distance, so that they can interfere. Its loss, through noise or coupling to surroundings, turns interference into a simple addition of intensities.

Named by 2 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

The size of the quantum says what is carrying the current. What the flux quantum would be for each candidate carrier charge, in units of 10⁻¹⁵ webers, against the measured value drawn as a line. A single electron would give 4.1357, a pair 2.0678, a triple 1.3786. The measurement is 2.0678, which picks the pair and excludes the others by a factor of two — not by a few per cent, so no question of experimental accuracy arises. The whole of the argument is that the condensate's wavefunction must come back to itself round the ring, which makes the enclosed flux a multiple of h over the carrier's charge; measuring the multiple therefore measures the charge, without any charge ever being measured. That is how the pairing was established in 1961, four years after it was proposed and by an experiment that looks nothing like a measurement of a charge.

The two in the flux quantum

A superconducting ring cannot hold whatever flux is applied to it. It holds a whole number of quanta and drives a current to make up the difference, and the size of that quantum is Planck's constant divided by twice the electron's charge. The factor of two was measured in 1961, four years after somebody predicted that the carriers are pairs — by an experiment in which no charge is measured at all.

electromagnetism · Superconductivity A current with no voltage, and then a voltage that is a frequency. Current against mean voltage for a Josephson junction shunted by a resistance, in units of its critical current and of the critical current times the resistance. Up to the critical current the junction carries a supercurrent at exactly zero voltage, set by the difference of the two superconductors' phases. Above it a mean voltage appears, growing as R√(I² − Ic²) and approaching the ohmic line at large current; the curve is integrated from the junction equation and checked against that result at three currents. The voltage is not steady. It is a train of pulses, each the phase slipping by one turn, at a frequency of 483.6 GHz per millivolt: for a junction with Ic = 1 mA and R = 1 Ω, one unit of the voltage axis is 1 mV and 484 GHz.

The voltage that is a frequency

Two superconductors separated by a barrier a nanometre thick carry a current with no voltage at all, set by the difference of their quantum phases. Push harder and a voltage appears — and a voltage makes that phase difference run, so the current oscillates at 483.6 gigahertz for every millivolt. Shine microwaves on the junction and the voltage locks to exact multiples of the frequency divided by a ratio of fundamental constants, with nothing about the junction in it. That is why a volt is now counted in cycles.

electromagnetism · Superconductivity

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Flux quantumMacroscopic quantum stateSuperconductivityCondensateCooper-pairFlux quantisationJosephson effectLittle parks effectOrder parameterPersistent currentPhase lockingShapiro step

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