Fiske steps and Abrikosov vortices in Josephson tunnel junctions

Abstract: We present a theoretical and experimental study of the Fiske resonances in the current-voltage characteristics of "small" Josephson junctions with randomly distributed misaligned Abrikosov vortices. We obtained that in the presence of Abrikosov vortices, the resonant interaction of electromagnetic waves, excited inside a junction, with the ac Josephson current manifests itself by Fiske steps in a current-voltage characteristics even in the absence of external magnetic field. We found that the voltage positions of the Fiske steps are determined by a junction size but the Fiske-step magnitudes depend both on the density of trapped Abrikosov vortices and on their misalignment parameter. We measured the magnetic field dependence of both the amplitude of the first Fiske step and the Josephson critical current of low-dissipative small Nb-based Josephson tunnel junctions with artificially introduced Abrikosov vortices. A strong decay of the Josephson critical current and a weak nonmonotonic decrease in the first Fiske-step amplitude on the Abrikosov vortex density were observed. The experimentally observed dependencies are well described by the developed theory.