Probing interfacial pair breaking in tunnel junctions based on the first and the second harmonics of the Josephson current

摘要

It will be shown that a pronounced interfacial pair breaking can beidentified in Josephson tunnel junctions provided the first j_{1c} and thesecond j_{2c} harmonics of the supercurrent, as well as the depairing currentin the bulk j_{dp}, are known. Namely, within the Ginzburg-Landau theory astrong interfacial pair breaking results in the relationj_{2c}j_{dp}>>j_{1c}^2, while in standard junctions, with negligibly small pairbreaking, the relation of opposite character takes place.