Eur. Phys. J. B (2015) 88: 185
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2015-60381-1

Regular Article

Thermal depinning of fluxons in ratchet discrete Josephson rings

¹ Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, Tunja, Colombia
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, Colgate University, Hamilton NY 13346, USA
³ Dpto. de Física de la Materia Condensada, Universidad de Zaragoza, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain
⁴ Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragón, C.S.I.C.-Universidad de Zaragoza, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain

^a e-mail: juanjo@unizar.es

Received: 14 May 2015
Received in final form: 9 June 2015
Published online: 15 July 2015

Abstract

We study numerically the thermal depinning of single fluxons in ratchet Josephson junction rings. Rings are made of 9 junctions with 3 different critical currents. We present results for a wide range of the main physical parameters of the system: damping, coupling and temperature. The computed results can be well understood in the framework of single particle thermal activation theories.