TRANSFORMER CONFIGURATION IN 3-DIMENSIONAL JOSEPHSON LATTICES AT ZEROMAGNETIC-FIELD

Recent experiments on Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8-y superconductors at zero magnetic field have been performed with a transformer configuration of contact s. We interpret the experimental data on the basis of large-scale Lang evin dynamical simulations of a three dimensional (3D) Josephson latti ce with a current bias through a single plane. We show that the experi mentally observed effects can be attributed to linking thermal vortex loop excitations that cause voltages in neighboring superconducting pl anes to lock in a narrow temperature range near the 3D phase transitio n.