Josephson Edge Detector, A Novel Switching Element

A superconductive switching device called a Josephson Edge Detector (JED) is described which uses an interferometer capable of storing several flux quanta. Unlike conventional logic interferometers, the new device does not work by switching between lobes and windows of a threshold curve: rather it takes advantage of exteremely asymmetric critical points beqgath the threshold curve. Thus the JED is sensitive to the sign of the time derivative of an input signal. This is an attractive feature for several applications. © 1979 IEEE