Fast-driving spectroscopy of current-phase relationships of individual Josephson elements

Extracting the current-phase relationship (CPR) of a single superconducting junction is challenging in practice and traditionally involves embedding the junction in a larger superconducting circuit containing SQUIDs and/or resonators. Applying ac driving to the junction has proven to be a viable and less invasive way to extract information about the few lowest harmonics of the CPR, by locating the integer and fractional Shapiro steps in the 𝐼⁢𝑉-curve of the driven junction. Here, we present an alternative driving-based method that allows to extract the full harmonic content of a CPR in a relatively noninvasive way, by fitting the measured critical currents of the driven junction as a function of driving power. We test our method, both using numerical simulations and in experiments, and we show that it works accurately.