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arXiv:2310.03102 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Tunneling of fluxons via a Josephson resonant level

Tereza Vakhtel, Pavel D. Kurilovich, Marta Pita‐Vidal, Arno Bargerbos, Valla Fatemi, Bernard van Heck

Published Jul 3, 2024• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Fluxons in a superconducting loop can be coherently coupled by quantum phase slips occurring at a weak link such as a Josephson junction. If Cooper pair tunneling at the junction occurs through a resonant level, then $2\ensuremath{\pi}$ quantum phase slips are suppressed, and fluxons are predominantly coupled by $4\ensuremath{\pi}$ quantum phase slips. We analyze this scenario by computing the coupling between fluxons as the level is brought into resonance with the superconducting condensate. The results indicate that the $4\ensuremath{\pi}$-dominated regime can be observed directly in the transition spectrum for circuit parameters typical of a fluxonium qubit. We also show that if the inductive energy of the loop is much smaller than the plasma frequency of the junction, then the low-energy Hamiltonian of the circuit is dual to that of a topological superconducting island. These findings can inform experiments on bifluxon qubits as well as the design of novel types of protected qubits.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.110.045404

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Fluxons in a superconducting loop can be coherently coupled by quantum phase slips occurring at a weak link such as a Josephson junction. If Cooper pair tunneling at the junction occurs through a resonant level, then 2\ensuremathπ2\ensuremath{\pi}2\ensuremathπ quantum phase slips are suppressed, and fluxons are predominantly coupled by 4\ensuremathπ4\ensuremath{\pi}4\ensuremathπ quantum phase slips. We analyze this scenario by computing the coupling between fluxons as the level is brought into resonance with the superconducting condensate. The results indicate that the 4\ensuremathπ4\ensuremath{\pi}4\ensuremathπ-dominated regime can be observed directly in the transition spectrum for circuit parameters typical of a fluxonium qubit. We also show that if the inductive energy of the loop is much smaller than the plasma frequency of the junction, then the low-energy Hamiltonian of the circuit is dual to that of a topological superconducting island. These findings can inform experiments on bifluxon qubits as well as the design of novel types of protected qubits.
We investigate the consequences of resonant tunneling of Cooper pairs on the quantum phase slips occurring in a Josephson junction. The amplitude for quantum tunneling under the Josephson potential barrier is modified by the Landau-Zener amplitude of adiabatic passage through an Andreev level crossing, resulting in the suppression of $2\ensuremath{\pi}$ phase slips. As a consequence, close to resonance, $4\ensuremath{\pi}$ phase slips become the dominant tunneling process. We illustrate this crossover by determining the energy spectrum of a transmon circuit, showing that a residual charge dispersion persists even at perfect transparency.
Encoding quantum information in quantum states with disjoint wave-function support and noise-insensitive energies is the key behind the idea of qubit protection. While fully protected qubits are expected to offer exponential protection against both energy relaxation and pure dephasing, simpler circuits may grant partial protection with currently achievable parameters. Here, we study a fluxonium circuit in which the wave functions are engineered to minimize their overlap while benefiting from a first-order-insensitive flux sweet spot. Taking advantage of a large superinductance ( L ∼ 1 μ H ), our circuit incorporates a resonant tunneling mechanism at zero external flux that couples states with the same fluxon parity, thus enabling bifluxon tunneling. The states | 0 ⟩ and | 1 ⟩ are encoded in wave functions with parities 0 and 1, respectively, ensuring a minimal form of protection against relaxation. Two-tone spectroscopy reveals the energy-level structure of the circuit and the presence of 4 π quantum-phase slips between different potential wells corresponding to m = ± 1 fluxons, which can be precisely described by a simple fluxonium Hamiltonian or by an effective bifluxon Hamiltonian. Despite suboptimal fabrication, the measured relaxation ( T 1 = 177 ± 3 μ s ) and dephasing ( T 2 E = 75 ± 5 μ s ) times not only demonstrate the relevance of our approach but also open an alternative direction toward quantum computing using partially protected fluxonium qubits. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Abstract Superconducting circuits represent a versatile playground to explore novel quantum phenomena and a platform to realize quantum bits (qubits). Superconducting qubits hinge on the coherent tunneling of Cooper pairs across the insulating barrier of a Josephson junction. This qubit implementation is, however, plagued with the variability of the fabricated junction, along with the need for magnetic tunability of the qubit transition frequency. Alternatively, a dual to the Josephson effect—referred to as quantum phase slips—allows for a coherent coupling of flux states and has been used to build phase-slip qubits. In this paper, we propose coupling flux states of a superconducting ring using a bias voltage. By solving the time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau equations, we demonstrate that the bias voltage locally suppresses the density of Cooper pairs, thereby forming a weak link where phase slips occur. Moreover, we show that a voltage-biased superconducting ring serves as an electrically-controlled magnetic memory. The work presented in this paper is an important step towards realizing electrically-tunable superconducting devices, such as qubits and SQUIDs.
Long-lived fluxon excitations can be trapped inside a superinductor ring, which is divided into an array of loops by a periodic sequence of Josephson junctions in the quantum regime, thereby allowing fluxons to tunnel between neighboring sites. By tuning the Josephson couplings and, implicitly, the fluxon tunneling probability amplitudes, a wide class of one-dimensional tight-binding lattice models may be implemented and populated with a stable number of fluxons. We illustrate the use of this quantum simulation platform by discussing the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model in the one-fluxon subspace, which hosts a symmetry-protected topological phase with fractionally charged bound states at the edges. This pair of localized edge states could be used to implement a superconducting qubit increasingly decoupled from decoherence mechanisms.
We analyze the coherent dynamics of a fluxonium device (Manucharyan et al 2009 Science 326 113 ) formed by a superconducting ring of Josephson junctions in which strong quantum phase fluctuations are localized exclusively on a single weak element. In such a system, quantum phase tunnelling by occurring at the weak element couples the states of the ring with supercurrents circulating in opposite directions, while the rest of the ring provides an intrinsic electromagnetic environment of the qubit. Taking into account the capacitive coupling between nearest neighbors and the capacitance to the ground, we show that the homogeneous part of the ring can sustain electrodynamic modes which couple to the two levels of the flux qubit. In particular, when the number of Josephson junctions is increased, several low-energy modes can have frequencies lower than the qubit frequency. This gives rise to a quasiperiodic dynamics, which manifests itself as a decay of oscillations between the two counterpropagating current states at short times, followed by oscillation-like revivals at later times. We analyze how the system approaches such a dynamics as the ring's length is increased and discuss possible experimental implications of this non-adiabatic regime.