Josephson transport through a Hubbard impurity center

Abstract

We investigate the Josephson transport through a thin semiconductor barrier containing impurity centers with the on-site Hubbard interaction $u$ of an arbitrary sign and strength. We find that in the case of the repulsive interaction the Josephson current changes sign with the temperature increase if the energy of the impurity level $\epsilon$ (measured from the Fermi energy of superconductors) falls in the interval $(-u,0)$. We predict strong temporal fluctuations of the current if only a few centers present within the junction. In the case of the attractive impurity potential ($u<0$) and at low temperatures, the model is reduced to the effective two level Hamiltonian allowing thus a simple description of the nonstationary Josephson effect in terms of pair tunneling processes.