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Physical Review B

Microwave-induced phase escape in a Josephson tunnel junction

Sun Guozhu, Wang Yiwen, Cao Junyu, Jian Chen, Zhengming Ji, Kang Lin, XU Wei-wei, Yu Meng Yang, Siyuan Han, Wu Pei-Heng

Published Mar 28, 2008• 11 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We perform both theoretical and experimental investigations on the phase escape of a current-biased Josephson tunnel junction under microwave irradiation. The switching current distributions exhibit abundant nonlinear behaviors depending on the power and frequency of the applied microwave. We present a model to describe the behavior of the primary peak in the switching current distribution, which is confirmed by our experimental results. The obtained features can be used to characterize the damping parameter of Josephson junctions.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.77.104531

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A quantum-mechanical analysis of the Josephson phase escape in the presence of both dc and ac bias currents is presented. We find that the potential barrier for the escape of the phase is effectively suppressed as the resonant condition occurs, i.e., when the frequency $\ensuremath{\omega}$ of the ac bias matches the Josephson-junction energy-level separation. This effect manifests itself by a pronounced drop in the dependence of the switching current ${I}_{s}$ on the power W of the applied microwave radiation and by a peculiar double-peak structure in the switching current distribution ${P(I}_{s}).$ The developed theory is in a good accord with an experiment which we also report in this paper. The obtained features can be used to characterize certain aspects of the quantum-mechanical behavior of the Josephson phase, such as the energy level quantization, the Rabi frequency of coherent oscillations, and the effect of damping.

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Chinese Physics Letters•Apr 1, 2015•3 citations
We perform both theoretical and experimental investigations on the phase escape of a current-biased Josephson tunnel junction under microwave irradiation. The switching current distributions exhibit abundant nonlinear behaviors depending on the power and frequency of the applied microwave. We present a model to describe the behavior of the primary peak in the switching current distribution, which is confirmed by our experimental results. The obtained features can be used to characterize the damping parameter of Josephson junctions.
A quantum-mechanical analysis of the Josephson phase escape in the presence of both dc and ac bias currents is presented. We find that the potential barrier for the escape of the phase is effectively suppressed as the resonant condition occurs, i.e., when the frequency $\ensuremath{\omega}$ of the ac bias matches the Josephson-junction energy-level separation. This effect manifests itself by a pronounced drop in the dependence of the switching current Is{I}_{s}Is​ on the power W of the applied microwave radiation and by a peculiar double-peak structure in the switching current distribution P(Is).{P(I}_{s}).P(Is​). The developed theory is in a good accord with an experiment which we also report in this paper. The obtained features can be used to characterize certain aspects of the quantum-mechanical behavior of the Josephson phase, such as the energy level quantization, the Rabi frequency of coherent oscillations, and the effect of damping.
We investigate, by experiments and numerical simulations, thermal activation processes of Josephson tunnel junctions in the presence of microwave radiation. When the applied signal resonates with the Josephson plasma frequency oscillations, the switching current may become multivalued in a temperature range far exceeding the classical to quantum crossover temperature. Plots of the switching currents traced as a function of the applied signal frequency show very good agreement with the functional forms expected from Josephson plasma frequency dependencies on the bias current. Throughout, numerical simulations of the corresponding thermally driven classical Josephson junction model show very good agreement with the experimental data.
We present a study of phase escape in surface Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+ δ intrinsic Josephson junctions in the presence of microwave radiation. The measured switching current distributions display clear double-peak structures in the microwave field, which result from the single- and two-photon resonant escape processes accompanied by microwave-induced potential barrier suppression. We show that these results can be well explained by a quantum-mechanical model proposed by Fistul et al (2003 Phys. Rev. B 68 060504), from which the power and frequency dependences of the switching current distributions can be reproduced.
The microwave-driven dynamics of the superconducting phase difference across a Josephson junction is now widely employed in superconducting qubits and quantum circuits. With their typical energy level separation frequency being several GHz, cooling these quantum devices to the ground state requires temperatures below 100 mK. Pushing the operation frequency of superconducting qubits up may allow for operation of superconducting qubits at 1 K and even higher temperatures. Here, we present measurements of the switching currents of niobium/aluminum–aluminum oxide/niobium Josephson junctions in the presence of millimeter-wave radiation at frequencies above 100 GHz. The observed switching current distributions display clear double-peak structures, which result from the resonant escape of the Josephson phase from a stationary state. We show that the data can be well explained by the strong-driving model including the irradiation-induced suppression of the potential barrier. While still being measured in the quasi-classical regime, our results point toward a feasibility of operating phase qubits around 100 GHz.
The microwave-driven dynamics of the superconducting phase difference across a Josephson junction is now widely employed in superconducting qubits and quantum circuits. With the typical energy level separation frequency of several GHz, cooling these quantum devices to the ground state requires temperatures below 100 mK. Pushing the operation frequency of superconducting qubits up may allow for operation of superconducting qubits at 1 K and even higher temperatures. Here we present measurements of the switching currents of niobium/aluminum-aluminum oxide/niobium Josephson junctions in the presence of millimeter-wave radiation at frequencies above 100 GHz. The observed switching current distributions display clear double-peak structures, which result from the resonant escape of the Josephson phase from a stationary state. We show that the data can be well explained by the strong-driving model including the irradiation-induced suppression of the potential barrier. While still being measured in the quasi-classical regime, our results point towards a feasibility of operating phase qubits around 100 GHz.
We investigate the distribution of the switching current of a current-biased Josephson junction (CBJJ) and its dependence on the microwave frequency using two theoretical methods, one of which is the quantum trajectory method and the other is the master equation method. Both the methods show that the distribution of the switching current of CBJJ will exhibit double peaks in a certain range of microwave frequency if proper microwave power is given, and the gap between the two peaks will increase with the microwave frequency. The obtained results can be used to identify the energy difference of the ground and first excited states in a Josephson junction for any bias current.