Fluxon cotunneling in coupled Josephson junctions: Perturbation theory
Phys. Rev. B 112, 144501 – Published 1 October, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/1ltt-j2st
Abstract
We investigate the effects of fluxon cotunneling and quantum Coulomb drag in a system of two small Josephson junctions coupled by means of mutual capacitance . Depending on the value of we identify three different regimes of strong, intermediate, and weak coupling. Focusing our attention on the last two regimes we develop a perturbation theory in the interaction and explicitly derive fluxon cotunneling amplitudes at sufficiently small mutual capacitance values. We demonstrate that the Coulomb drag effect survives at any nonzero and evaluate the nonlocal voltage response that is in general determined by a trade-off between two different cotunneling processes. Our predictions can be straightforwardly generalized to bilinear Josephson chains and directly verified in future experiments.