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Physical Review B

Single-electron transistor backaction on the single-electron box

Benjamin Turek, Konrad W. Lehnert, Aashish A. Clerk, David Gunnarsson, Kevin Bladh, Per Delsing, R. J. Schoelkopf

Published May 26, 2005• 23 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report an experimental observation of the backaction of a single-electron transistor (SET) measuring the Coulomb staircase of a single-electron box. As current flows through the SET, the charge state of the SET island fluctuates. These fluctuations capacitively couple to the box and cause changes in the position, width, and asymmetry of the Coulomb staircase. A sequential tunneling model accurately recreates these effects, confirming this mechanism of the backaction of a SET. This is a first step toward understanding the effects of quantum measurement on solid-state qubits.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.71.193304

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We report an experimental observation of the backaction of a single-electron transistor (SET) measuring the Coulomb staircase of a single-electron box. As current flows through the SET, the charge state of the SET island fluctuates. These fluctuations capacitively couple to the box and cause changes in the position, width, and asymmetry of the Coulomb staircase. A sequential tunneling model accurately recreates these effects, confirming this mechanism of the backaction of a SET. This is a first step toward understanding the effects of quantum measurement on solid-state qubits.
We report an experimental observation of the backaction of a Single Electron Transistor (SET) measuring the Coulomb staircase of a single electron box. As current flows through the SET, the charge state of the SET island fluctuates. These fluctuations capacitively couple to the box and cause changes in the position, width, and asymmetry of the Coulomb staircase. A sequential tunnelling model accurately recreates these effects, confirming this mechanism of the backaction of an SET. This is a first step towards understanding the effects of quantum measurement on solid state qubits.
For quantum computers to become reality, not only do the qubits have to be carefully engineered to be well isolated during operation time, but this also puts great strain on the measurement setup. We have looked at the backaction from a single-electron transistor (SET), operated both in the normal and in the superconducting state, on a single Cooper-pair box qubit. We have also designed a new read-out setup for a flux qubit using a Cooper-pair transistor that would allow read-out at the flux degeneracy point. In the first case we calculate the mixing time and the influence on the qubit steady-state distribution. We find that the mixing time is larger than typical experimental measurement times, indicating the possibility of single shot read-out. For the steady-state distribution of the qubit, we calculate the Coulomb staircase, finding additional structure due to the noise in the SET. For the flux qubit we design a read-out scheme involving a quantum flip-flop process, where the measurement outcome results in the presence or absence of an incoherent tunneling process. We estimate read-out and mixing times and find that single shot read-out should be achievable.
We investigate the backaction of superconducting single-electron transistor (SSET) continuously measuring a Cooper-pair box. Due to the minimized backaction of the SSET, we observe a 2e periodic Coulomb staircase according to the two-level system Hamiltonian of the Cooper-pair box. We demonstrate that we can control the quantum broadening of the ground state in-situ. We perform spectroscopy measurements and demonstrate that we have full control over the Cooper-pair box Hamiltonian. The ability to reduce the backaction is a necessary condition to use the SSET as a quantum state readout for the CPB as a qubit.
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We report on the effect of the backaction of a single Cooper pair transistor electrometer (E\mathbf{E}E) on the charge state of a superconducting box (B\mathbf{B}B). The charge is eee periodic in the gate bias of B\mathbf{B}B when E\mathbf{E}E is operated near voltages $2\ensuremath{\Delta}/e$ or $4\ensuremath{\Delta}/e$. We show that this is due to quasiparticle poisoning of B\mathbf{B}B at a rate proportional to the number of quasiparticle tunneling events in E\mathbf{E}E per second. We are able to eliminate this backaction and recover 2e2e2e-charge periodicity using a new measurement method based on switching-current modulation of E\mathbf{E}E.