Flow of electric current between two pieces of superconducting material (see superconductivity ) separated by a thin layer of insulating material.
This flow was predicted by the British physicist John Bardeen ). According to Josephson, pairs of {{link=electron">electron s can move from one superconductor to the other across the insulating layer (tunneling). The locus of this action is called a Josephson junction. The Josephson current flows only if no battery is connected across the two conductors. A major application of this discovery is in superfast switching devices used in computers, which can be 100 times faster than ordinary semiconducting circuits.