My thesis is concerned with a number of aspects of vortex dynamics in Josephson-junction arrays. These connections form Josephson junctions, that can carry a dissipationless supercurrent.
Vortices are excitations of the array in the form of eddy-current patterns.
It is essential to understand the rich dynamical behavior of these excitations in order to explain many of the thermal and dynamical properties of arrays. The vortex dynamics in JJA can be extracted explicitly, and in great detail, by numerical solution of the coupled nonlinear equations of motion that describe the time evolution of the superconducting phases in the array. In our work we have considered the classical regime, where the superconducting phases on the islands are the only dynamical variables. We have studied arrays with infinite magnetic penetration depth as well as inductive arrays. In experiments vortex dynamics is usually inferred from macroscopic observable quantities.