Terahertz oscillation in submicron sized intrinsic Josephson junctions

Intrinsic Josephson junctions (IJJs) with lateral sizes down to submicron have been fabricated in high temperature cuprate superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta single crystals. With in-plane magnetic fields applied perpendicular to the short edges, equally spaced current steps with intervals up to millivolts have been observed in current-voltage characteristics, indicating that terahertz oscillation has been excited in the junctions. The one-by-one switching to the same resonance frequency will make possible to employ a submicron sized IJJs stack as a building block for solid state terahertz continuous wave sources. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.