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The appearance of chaos along the “charged” resonance circuit branch of the current-voltage characteristics is examined in a model of intrinsic Josephson junctions shunted by resistive, inductive and capacitive circuit elements. Detailed numerical simulations of the electric charge density, current-voltage characteristics and various chaos indicators, such as Lyapunov exponents and Poincaré sections are performed over a wide range of relevant system parameters. In mapping the parameter space, several distinctly different regions are found: some completely regular, while others are dominated by chaos, where the rc-frequency determines the appearance and properties of those regions. At higher values of the rc-frequency chaos appears at first over relatively narrow regions at the lower-current end of the rc-branch. As the rc-frequency is lowered, the chaotic region at the lowered-current end of the rc-branch may becomes wider, depending sensitively on the combination of system parameters. Examination of the metric entropy and maximal Kaplan–Yorke dimension shows that the dimensions of the chaotic attractors associated with the chaos do not plateau, as in the overdamped case, but surprisingly increase indefinitely with the number of junctions, indicating that the system is capable of truly high-dimensional chaos. The onset of the chaos along the rc-branch is found to occur via a two-frequency quasi-periodic route. Our results provided a guide for specific parameter combinations that could minimize the chaos, thereby making certain applications potentially more viable.

Examination of an annular system of underdamped Josephson junctions in the presence of external radiation showed that the ability of the system to lock with some external radiation was determined not only by the number but also by the type of rotating excitations (fluxons or antifluxons). Shapiro steps can be observed in the current-voltage characteristic only in the system with trapped fluxons or in the system with fluxon-antifluxon pairs. If the trapped fluxons circulate simultaneously with fluxon-antifluxon pairs, there are no Shapiro steps regardless of the amplitude or frequency of the applied external radiation. © 2020 American Physical Society.

The effects of inertial terms on the dynamics of the dc+ac driven Frenkel-Kontorova model were examined. As the mass of particles was varied, the response of the system to the driving forces and appearance of the Shapiro steps were analyzed in detail. Unlike in the overdamped case, the increase of mass led to the appearance of the whole series of subharmonic steps in the staircase of the average velocity as a function of average driving force in any commensurate structure. At certain values of parameters, the subharmonic steps became separated by chaotic windows while the whole structure retained scaling similar to the original staircase. The mass of the particles also determined their sensitivity to the forces governing their dynamics. Depending on their mass, they were found to exhibit three types of dynamics, from dynamical mode-locking with chaotic windows, through to a typical dc response, to essentially a free-particle response. Examination of this dynamics in both the upforce and downforce directions showed that the system may not only exhibit hysteresis, but also that large Shapiro steps may appear in the downforce direction, even in cases for which no dynamical mode-locking occurred in the upforce direction. © 2019 American Physical Society.

The devils staircase structure arising from the complete mode locking of an entirely nonchaotic system, the overdamped dc+ac driven Frenkel-Kontorova model with deformable substrate potential, was observed. Even though no chaos was found, a hierarchical ordering of the Shapiro steps was made possible through the use of a previously introduced continued fraction formula. The absence of chaos, deduced here from Lyapunov exponent analyses, can be attributed to the overdamped character and the Middleton no-passing rule. A comparative analysis of a one-dimensional stack of Josephson junctions confirmed the disappearance of chaos with increasing dissipation. Other common dynamic features were also identified through this comparison. A detailed analysis of the amplitude dependence of the Shapiro steps revealed that only for the case of a purely sinusoidal substrate potential did the relative sizes of the steps follow a Farey sequence. For nonsinusoidal (deformed) potentials, the symmetry of the Stern-Brocot tree, depicting all members of particular Farey sequence, was seen to be increasingly broken, with certain steps being more prominent and their relative sizes not following the Farey rule.