DC Josephson Effect in a Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquid

Abstract

The dc Josephson effect in a one-dimensional Tomonaga-Luttinger (TL) liquid is studied on the basis of two bosonized models. We first consider a TL liquid sandwiched between two superconductors with a strong barrier at each interface. Both the interfaces are assumed to be perfect if the barrier potential is absent. We next consider a TL liquid with open boundaries, weakly coupled with two superconductors. Without putting strong barriers, we instead assume that the coupling at each interface is described by a tunnel junction. We calculate the Josephson current in each model, and find that the two models yield same results. The Josephson current is suppressed by repulsive electron-electron interactions. It is shown that the suppression is characterized by only the correlation exponent for the charge degrees of freedom. This result is inconsistent with a previously reported result, where the spin degrees of freedom also affects the suppression. The reason of this inconsistency is discussed.