Superharmonic Josephson relation at 0-/π-junction transition -: art. no. 220506

Critical current was recently measured near the transition from 0 to pi-contact in superconductor/ferromagnet/superconductor Josephson junctions. Contrary to expectations, it does not vanish at the transition point. It shows instead a tiny, though finite, minimum. The observation of fractional Shapiro steps reenforces the idea that the vanishing of the main sinusoidal term in the Josephson relation gives room to the next harmonics. Within the quasiclassical approach we calculate the Josephson relation while taking into account the magnetic scattering. We find that the observed minimum is compatible with the value of the second harmonics expected from the theory.