Nonlinear nonequilibrium quasiparticle relaxation in Josephson junctions

Nonequilibrium electrons in superconductors relax and eventually recombine into Cooper pairs. Relaxation is facilitated by electron-boson interaction and is accompanied by emission of nonequilibrium bosons. Here I solve numerically a full set of nonlinear kinetic balance equations for stacked Josephson junctions, which allows analysis of strongly nonequilibrium phenomena. It is shown that nonlinearity becomes significant already at very small disequilibrium. The following new, essentially nonlinear effects are obtained: (i) At even-gap voltages $V=2n \Delta/e$ $(n=2,3,...)$ nonequilibrium bosonic bands overlap. This leads to enhanced emission of $\Omega = 2 \Delta$ bosons and to appearance of dips in tunnel conductance. (ii) A new type of radiative solution is found at strong disequilibrium. It is characterized by the fast stimulated relaxation of nonequilibrium quasiparticles. A stack in this state behaves as a light emitting diode and directly converts electric power to boson emission, without utilization of the ac-Josephson effect. This leads to very high radiation efficacy and to significant radiative cooling of the stack. The phenomenon can be used for realization of a new type of superconducting cascade laser in the THz frequency range.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures and a supplementar

Phase transitions in Bose-Fermi-Hubbard model in the heavy fermion limit: Hard-core boson approach

Phase transitions are investigated in the Bose-Fermi-Hubbard model in the mean field and hard-core boson approximations for the case of infinitely small fermion transfer and repulsive on-site boson-fermion interaction. The behavior of the Bose-Einstein condensate order parameter and grand canonical potential is analyzed as functions of the chemical potential of bosons at zero temperature. The possibility of change of order of the phase transition to the superfluid phase in the regime of fixed values of the chemical potentials of Bose- and Fermi-particles is established. The relevant phase diagrams are built.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figure