Devil's Staircases and Continued Fractions in the Josephson Junctions

Abstract

The detailed numerical simulations of the IV-characteristics of Josephson junction under external electromagnetic radiation show devil's staircases within different bias current intervals. We have found that the observed steps form very precisely continued fractions. Increasing of the amplitude of radiation shifts the devil's staircases to higher Shapiro steps. The algorithm of appearing and detection of the subharmonics with increasing radiation amplitude is proposed. We demonstrate that subharmonic steps registered in the famous experiments by A. H. Dayem and J. J. Wiegand [Phys. Rev 155, 419 (1967)] and J. Clarke [Phys. Rev. B 4, 2963 (1971)] also form continued fractions.