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Physical Review Letters

Resonant Cooper Pair Tunneling through a Double-Island Qubit

E. Bibow, P. Lafarge, Laurent-Patrick Lévy

Published Dec 17, 2001• 27 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We have measured transport in the Coulomb blockade regime through a quantum system consisting of two superconducting islands coupled by a Josephson junction. The double island is weakly connected to leads by small superconducting tunnel junctions. At low bias voltages, a new resonant transport process for Cooper pairs is observed. The results show that Cooper pair transport can be used as a probe of the macroscopic energy levels of the double island.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.88.017003

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We have measured transport in the Coulomb blockade regime through a quantum system consisting of two superconducting islands coupled by a Josephson junction. The double island is weakly connected to leads by small superconducting tunnel junctions. At low bias voltages, a new resonant transport process for Cooper pairs is observed. The results show that Cooper pair transport can be used as a probe of the macroscopic energy levels of the double island.
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.
Photon emission by tunneling electrons can be encouraged by locating a resonator close to the tunnel junction and applying an appropriate voltage bias. However, studies of normal metals show that the resonator also affects how the charges flow, facilitating processes in which correlated tunneling of two charges produces one photon. We develop a theory to analyze this kind of behavior in Josephson junctions by deriving an effective Hamiltonian describing processes where two Cooper pairs generate a single photon. We determine the conditions under which the transport is dominated by incoherent tunneling of two Cooper pairs, while also uncovering a regime of coherent double Cooper-pair tunneling. We show that the system can also display an unusual form of photon blockade and hence could serve as a single-photon source.
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We analyze tunneling of Cooper pairs across voltage biased asymmetric single-Cooper-pair transistors. Also tunneling of Cooper pairs across two capacitively coupled Cooper-pair boxes is considered, when the capacitive coupling and Cooper pair tunneling are provided by a small Josephson junction between the islands. The theoretical analysis is done at subgap voltages, where the current-voltage characteristics depend strongly on the macroscopic eigenstates of the island(s) and their coupling to the dissipative environment. As the environment we use an impedance which satisfies $\mathrm{Re}[Z(\ensuremath{\omega})]⪡{R}_{Q}$ and a few LCLCLC oscillators in series with $Z(\ensuremath{\omega})$. The numerically calculated $I\text{\ensuremath{-}}V$ curves are compared with experiments where the quantum states of mesoscopic SQUIDs are probed with inelastic Cooper pair tunneling. The main features of the observed $I\text{\ensuremath{-}}V$ data are reproduced. Especially, we find traces of band structure in the higher excited states of the Cooper-pair boxes as well as traces of multiphoton processes between two Cooper-pair boxes in the regime of large Josephson coupling EJ⪢EC{E}_{J}⪢{E}_{C}EJ​⪢EC​.
We have calculated the I — V characteristics of voltage biased asymmetric single‐Cooper‐pair transistors (SCPT), resulting from coherent Cooper pair tunneling across both the Josephson junctions (JJ), weak dissipation due the electromagnetic environment (EE) satisfying Re[Z(ω)] ≪ RQ, and quasiparticles. Due to the asymmetry, the smaller JJ is effectively probing the macroscopic quantum states of the island. A resonance occurs whenever the energy released in a tunneling of a single, or several, Cooper pair(s) across the smaller JJ matches to the energy needed to excite the island.