The paper presents a detailed discussion of the current-voltage characteristic of intrinsic Josephson junctions in Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8ϩ␦ and Tl 2 Ba 2 Ca 2 Cu 3 O 10ϩ␦ . In these materials Josephson tunnel junctions are formed naturally between adjacent superconducting CuO 2 bilayers or trilayers. A typical sample consists of a stack of Josephson junctions. We explicitly show that all junctions inside a given sample have identical tunneling characteristics. We discuss the shape ͑general curvature͒ of the current-voltage characteristic in terms of a superconducting order parameter that has a predominant d x 2 Ϫy 2 symmetry. The I c R n product of the intrinsic Josephson junctions turns out to be 2-3 mV, about 10% of the maximum energy gap ⌬ 0 /e. The currentvoltage characteristic of every individual junction exhibits pronounced structures in the subgap regime. They are best explained by a recently proposed resonant coupling mechanism between infrared active optical c-axis phonons and oscillating Josephson currents.

We discuss a fundamental limitation for the coherent operation of superconducting quantum bits originating from phonon radiation generated in the Josephson junctions of the device. The time dependent superconducting phase across the junction produces an electric field that couples to the underlying crystal lattice via the piezoelectric effect. We determine the radiation resistance of the junction due to phonon emission and derive substantial decoherence rates for the quantum bits, which are compatible with quality factors measured in recent experiments.

We report on two types of experiments with intrinsic Josephson systems made from layered superconductors which show clear evidence of nonequilibrium effects: 1. In 2-point measurements of IV-curves in the presence of high- frequency radiation a shift of the voltage of Shapiro steps from the canonical value hf/(2e) has been observed. 2. In the IV-curves of double-mesa structures an influence of the current through one mesa on the voltage measured on the other mesa is detected. Both effects can be explained by charge-imbalance on the superconducting layers produced by the quasi-particle current, and can be described successfully by a recently developed theory of nonequilibrium effects in intrinsic Josephson systems.Comment: 8pages, 9figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

We study the optical properties of crystals with spatial dispersion and show that the usual Fresnel approach becomes invalid near frequencies where the group velocity of the wave packets inside the crystal vanishes. Near these special frequencies the reflectivity depends on the atomic structure of the crystal provided that disorder and dissipation are very low. This is demonstrated explicitly by a detailed study of layered superconductors with identical or two different alternating junctions in the frequency range near the Josephson plasma resonance. Accounting for both inductive and charge coupling of the intrinsic junctions, we show that multiple modes are excited inside the crystal by the incident light, determine their relative amplitude by the microscopic calculation of the additional boundary conditions and finally obtain the reflectivity. Spatial dispersion also provides a novel method to stop light pulses, which has possible applications for quantum information processing and the artificial creation of event horizons in a solid.