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Diwen wuli xuebao

MEASUREMENTS ON THE SWITCHING CURRENT DISTRIBUTION OF A JOSEPHSON JUNCTION

Sun G

Published Jan 1, 2005• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Josepshon junction has its switching current distribution, from which one could get not only the escape rate but also other quantum information like the energy level quantization, Rabi oscillation with proper microwave. The measurements on the switching current distribution of a Josephson junction is very helpful to the development of supercondutor qubit including phase qubit, chage qubit, flux qubit and their combinations. We present three measurement techniques and perform a measurement (10+4 times) on the switching current distribution of a homemade NbN/AlN-x/NbN Josephson junction at certain temperature. According to the disadvantages of the presently used technique and the result we get, more advices are given to the next measurements on the switching current distribution at the ultra low temperature (mK).

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Josepshon junction has its switching current distribution, from which one could get not only the escape rate but also other quantum information like the energy level quantization, Rabi oscillation with proper microwave. The measurements on the switching current distribution of a Josephson junction is very helpful to the development of supercondutor qubit including phase qubit, chage qubit, flux qubit and their combinations. We present three measurement techniques and perform a measurement (10+4 times) on the switching current distribution of a homemade NbN/AlN-x/NbN Josephson junction at certain temperature. According to the disadvantages of the presently used technique and the result we get, more advices are given to the next measurements on the switching current distribution at the ultra low temperature (mK).
Switching current distributions of an Nb/Al–AlO x /Nb Josephson junction are measured in a temperature range from 25 mK to 800 mK. We analyse the phase escape properties by using the theory of Larkin and Ovchinnikov (LO) which takes discrete energy levels into account. Our results show that the phase escape can be well described by the LO approach for temperatures near and below the crossover from thermal activation to macroscopic quantum tunneling. These results are helpful for further study of macroscopic quantum phenomena in Josephson junctions where discrete energy levels need to be considered.
We have developed a scheme for high resolution measurements of the switching current distribution of a current-biased Josephson tunnel junction using a timing technique. In the measurement setup digital control and read-out electronics are galvanically isolated from the analog sample bias electronics by an optical fiber link. We have successfully used this technique to investigate thermal activation and macroscopic quantum tunneling of the phase in a high-quality 5×5 μm2 Nb–Al/AlOx–Nb Josephson tunnel junction with a critical current of Ic≈325 μA. At temperatures above the cross over temperature of T★≈280 mK the escape is dominated by thermal activation. Due to the high quality factor of the junction (Q≈95), the escape temperature is noticeably affected by the thermal prefactor. At temperatures below T★, the value of which agrees well with the theoretical predictions, the escape of the phase by quantum mechanical tunneling is observed. The presented technique can be employed to characterize current-biased Josephson tunnel junctions for applications in quantum information processing.
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.
Superconducting qubit circuits require high quality low critical current density Josephson tunnel junctions. We have developed high quality epitaxial NbN/AlN/NbN tunnel junctions with critical current density, Jc, ranging from as low as a few A/cm2to a few tens of kA/cm2. In this work, we measured current-voltage characteristics for junctions with a Jc~ 32 A/cm2in the temperature range from 17 mK to above 6.7 K. All the junctions are in good quality and have a high gap voltage (>; 5.5 mV). We found that the junctions' sub-gap resistances were temperature dependent above 2.5 K and saturated at temperatures below 2.5 K. A junction sub-gap leakage current Irof about 23 pA was measured. The voltage noise power spectral density for 3 junctions with different sizes has been measured at the base temperature of 17 mK with the junctions biased above the gap voltage. The spectral densities clearly show 1/fbehavior at low frequency and are proportional to the junction's linear dimension.
We report on measurements of the switching current probability both in the thermal and quantum regime on moderately damped NbN/MgO/NbN Josephson junctions with very low critical current density (’ 2A/cm2). We observed three distinct regimes: below 90 mK the width of the switching distributions is constant within the experimental error, while from 90 mK to 1.6 K the width increases with temperature, this change of behavior signaling the standard transition from macroscopic quantum tunneling (MQT) to thermal activation (TA) regime respectively. Above 1.6 K we find effects of anti-correlation between the bath temperature and thermal fluctuations since the width of the histograms starts to collapse, and indications of a transition to a third regime called Phase Diffusion (PD) are evident, such as the change of the switching distributions symmetry. Experimental data have been analyzed through numerical fitting of the switching probability and Monte Carlo simulations, and we found a good agreement with theoretical expectations based on multiple re-trapping processes, which strongly depend on the junction damping. The parameters which completely characterize the dynamics of such moderately damped Josephson junctions have been also extracted.
We report on the switching current distributions in nano-hybrid Josephson junctions made of InAs semiconductor nanowires. The temperature dependence of the switching current distribution can be understood through the motion of Josephson phase particles escaping from a tilted washboard potential, and the data could be fitted well by using the macroscopic quantum tunneling, thermal activation or phase diffusion models, depending on temperature. Application of the gate voltage to tune the Josephson coupling strength enable us to adjust the effective temperature for the escape process, and holds promising for developing gate-tunable superconducting phase qubits.