Entrainment of Disordered RF SQUIDs on an External Magnetic Field

David Jindracek ’22

Student: David Jindracek ’22
Research Mentor: Bradley Trees (OWU Department of Physics and Astronomy)

Superconductors are widely studied for their potential to be useful in developing technologies. This study is taking a dive into the behaviors of modeled RF SQUIDs, a superconducting device used to measure external magnetic fields. Particularly, this study is modelling a group of these RF SQUIDs, with all of them being different.


Our study is observing the behaviors of the mathematical model of a superconducting device called an RF SQUID. We created Python code to solve for and plot the behavior of the model, and numerically solve for the magnetic flux through the SQUID as a function of time. We used these flux values to calculate a quantity called the order parameter, which was shown to dip at values of resonance for the SQUID array. Additionally, through Floquet theory, we analyze the stability of the long term behavior of the array. Continuing off of last year’s research on uniform SQUID arrays, the task was to generalize new and improved Python code for an array of superconducting RF SQUIDs that had differing self and mutual inductance strengths.