Critical currents for vortex defect motion in superconducting arrays

We study numerically the motion of vortices in two-dimensional arrays of resistively shunted Josephson junctions. An extra vortex is created in the ground states by introducing novel boundary conditions and made mobile by applying external currents. We then measure critical currents and the corresponding pinning energy barriers to vortex motion, which in the unfrustrated case agree well with previous theoretical and experimental findings. In the fully frustrated case our results also give good agreement with experimental ones, in sharp contrast with the existing theoretical prediction. A physical explanation is provided in relation with the vortex motion observed in simulations.Comment: To appear in Physical Review

Spatiotemporal Stochastic Resonance in Fully Frustrated Josephson Ladders

We consider a Josephson-junction ladder in an external magnetic field with half flux quantum per plaquette. When driven by external currents, periodic in time and staggered in space, such a fully frustrated system is found to display spatiotemporal stochastic resonance under the influence of thermal noise. Such resonance behavior is investigated both numerically and analytically, which reveals significant effects of anisotropy and yields rich physics.Comment: 8 pages in two columns, 8 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Comment on "Ising model on a small world network"

In the recent study of the Ising model on a small-world network by A. P\c{e}kalski [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 64}, 057104 (2001)], a surprisingly small value of the critical exponent $\beta \approx 0.0001$ has been obtained for the temperature dependence of the magnetization. We perform extensive Monte Carlo simulations of the same model and conclude, via the standard finite-size scaling of various quantities,that the phase transition in the model is of the mean-field nature, in contrast to the work by A. P\c{e}kalski but in accord with other existing studies.Comment: to be published in PR