Superconductor-insulator duality for an array of Josephson wires

A novel model system is proposed for the study of superconductor-insulator transitions that is a regular lattice whose each link consists of a Josephson-junction chain of N ≫ 1 junctions in sequence. The theory of such an array is developed for the case of semiclassical junctions with the Josephson energy E _J larger compared to the Coulomb energy E _C = e ²/2C of the junctions. An exact duality transformation is derived that transforms the Hamiltonian of the proposed model into a standard Hamiltonian of a JJ array. The nature of the ground state is controlled (in the absence of random offset charges) by the parameter q ≈ N ² exp with the superconductive state corresponding to small q < q _c . The values of q _c are calculated for magnetic frustrations f = 0 and f = 1/2. The temperature of the superconductive transition T _c (q) and q < q _c is estimated for the same values of f. In the presence of strong random offset charges, the T = 0 phase diagram is controlled by the parameter ; the critical value and the critical temperature at zero magnetic frustration are estimated. The text was submitted by the authors in English.