Coulomb interaction and first-order superconductor-insulator transition.

Abstract

The superconductor-insulator transition (SIT) in regular arrays of Josephson junctions is studied at low temperatures. We derived an imaginary time Ginzburg-Landau-type action properly describing the Coulomb interaction. The renormalization group analysis at zero temperature T=0 in the space dimensionality d=3 shows that the SIT is always of the first order. At finite T, a tricritical point separates the lines of the first- and second-order phase transitions. The same conclusion holds for d=2 if the mutual capacitance is larger than the distance between junctions.