The Josephson Effect

The purpose of this experiment was to measure the IV characteristics of a Josephson junction and to determine the critical current at zero magnetic field. This experiment also hoped to determine the magnetic flux quantum by analyzing the critical currents of the Josephson junction under a varying magnetic field. Two distinct values of the critical current were found in the absence of a magnetic field. These value were found to be (27.97

0.08) mA and (-34.190.08) mA. These were an extremely large number of (>1000) away from the expected value. The determination of the quantum flux was not successful as the “nodes” of the quantum interference patterns could not be resolved accurately.