Effects of external noise on the circle map and the transition to chaos in Josephson junctions

We investigate the effects of external current noise on a microwave-driven Josephson junction. We show that the circle return map for the superconducting phase difference is stable with respect to the external noise and find that the effects of fluctuations on the route to chaos described with the circle map can be opposite to those for the Feigenbaum period-doubling cascade: increasing noise can here act as a control parameter triggering a periodically oscillating junction chaotic by generating an inflection point in the return (circle) map. This may prove important also for other physical systems, including charge density waves.