DUALITY AND FLUXONICS IN SUPERCONDUCTING DEVICES

The concept of electrical duality is reviewed, with a focus on the symmetry between the motion of charge and the motion of magnetic flux. This approach is especially illuminating for the case of a superconductor, in which flux is quantized in units of φ0=h/2e. In a two-dimensional superconductor, a quantized vortex or fluxon can be viewed as the dual of an electron. Based on this analogy, new superconducting]] fluxonic" device concepts are proposed, including optical detectors and transistors. Finally, the implications of this picture for low- and high-temperature superconductors are evaluated.