Experiments on tunnelling in small normal-metal junctions influenced by dissipative environment: Critical comparison to the theories of quantum fluctuations

We report on experiments of charging in small normal metal tunnel junctions attached to well-defined resistive impedances. Our experiments are in very good agreement with the phase-correlation (PC) theory but not with the simplified voltage fluctuation (VF) model. The strong tunnelling corrections to the PC theory make the agreement with our results even better in the case of junctions with low resistance.