Abstract
I study the dynamics of a Josephson junction serving as a threshold detector of fluctuations which is subjected to a general non-equilibrium electronic noise source whose characteristic is to be determined by the junction. This experimental setup was proposed several years ago as a prospective scheme for determining the full counting statistics of an electronic noise source.
Despite intensive theoretical as well as experimental research in this direction the promise has not been quite fulfilled yet and I will discuss what the unsolved issues are. First, I review a general theory for the calculation of the exponential part of the non-equilibrium switching rates of the junction and compare its predictions with previous results found in different limiting cases by several authors.