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Scientific Reports

Observation of microwave absorption and emission from incoherent electron tunneling through a normal-metal–insulator–superconductor junction

Shumpei Masuda, Kuan Yen Tan, Matti Partanen, Russell E. Lake, Joonas Govenius, Matti Silveri, Hermann Grabert, Mikko Möttönen

Published Feb 26, 2018• 21 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We experimentally study nanoscale normal-metal-insulator-superconductor junctions coupled to a superconducting microwave resonator. We observe that bias-voltage-controllable single-electron tunneling through the junctions gives rise to a direct conversion between the electrostatic energy and that of microwave photons. The measured power spectral density of the microwave radiation emitted by the resonator exceeds at high bias voltages that of an equivalent single-mode radiation source at 2.5 K although the phonon and electron reservoirs are at subkelvin temperatures. Measurements of the generated power quantitatively agree with a theoretical model in a wide range of bias voltages. Thus, we have developed a microwave source which is compatible with low-temperature electronics and offers convenient in-situ electrical control of the incoherent photon emission rate with a predetermined frequency, without relying on intrinsic voltage fluctuations of heated normal-metal components or suffering from unwanted losses in room temperature cables. Importantly, our observation of negative generated power at relatively low bias voltages provides a novel type of verification of the working principles of the recently discovered quantum-circuit refrigerator.

DOI
10.1038/s41598-018-21772-5

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We experimentally study nanoscale normal-metal-insulator-superconductor junctions coupled to a superconducting microwave resonator. We observe that bias-voltage-controllable single-electron tunneling through the junctions gives rise to a direct conversion between the electrostatic energy and that of microwave photons. The measured power spectral density of the microwave radiation emitted by the resonator exceeds at high bias voltages that of an equivalent single-mode radiation source at 2.5 K although the phonon and electron reservoirs are at subkelvin temperatures. Measurements of the generated power quantitatively agree with a theoretical model in a wide range of bias voltages. Thus, we have developed a microwave source which is compatible with low-temperature electronics and offers convenient in-situ electrical control of the incoherent photon emission rate with a predetermined frequency, without relying on intrinsic voltage fluctuations of heated normal-metal components or suffering from unwanted losses in room temperature cables. Importantly, our observation of negative generated power at relatively low bias voltages provides a novel type of verification of the working principles of the recently discovered quantum-circuit refrigerator.
We experimentally realize an incoherent microwave source driven by voltage-controlled quantum tunneling of electrons through nanoscale normal-metal--insulator--superconductor junctions coupled to a resonator. We observe the direct conversion of the electronic energy into microwave photons by measuring the power spectrum of the microwave radiation emitted from the resonator. The demonstrated total output power exceeds that of 2.5-K thermal radiation although the photon and electron reservoirs are at subkelvin temperatures. Measurements of the output power quantitatively agree with a theoretical model in a wide range of the bias voltages providing information on the electrically-controlled photon creation. The developed photon source is fully compatible with low-temperature electronics and offers convenient in-situ electrical control of the photon emission rate with a predetermined frequency, without relying on intrinsic voltage fluctuations of heated normal-metal components nor suffering from unwanted dissipation in room temperature cables. In addition to its potential applications in microwave photonics, our results provide complementary verification of the working principles of the recently discovered quantum-circuit refrigerator.
Superconducting microwave circuits are promising candidates for a variety of different applications, ranging from extremely sensitive photon detectors to large-scale quantum computer. Thus, they may revolutionize our everyday lives in the future through substantial technological development. Superconducting quantum circuits typically operate at low power levels and consist of linear and nonlinear resonators. In order to enhance their operation fidelity, they need to be cooled efficiently, and the dissipation of the circuit needs to be well engineered. In this chapter, we describe a refrigerator for electric quantum circuits based on photon-assisted electron tunneling in hybrid superconductor–insulator–normal-metal junctions. Furthermore, such junctions can also serve as incoherent microwave sources. Importantly, the photon absorption and emission rates can be tuned over several orders of magnitude. In addition, these junctions are used for refrigeration and heating of the normal-metal electrons as well as for probing the electron temperature. Here, we present their operation principle and provide insight to their potential applications as well as briefly describe fabrication methods.
We propose a quantum-circuit refrigerator (QCR) based on photon-assisted quasiparticle tunneling through a single normal-metal–insulator–superconductor (NIS) junction. In contrast to previous studies with multiple junctions and an additional charge island for the QCR, we directly connect the NIS junction to an inductively shunted electrode of a superconducting microwave resonator making the device immune to low-frequency charge noise. At low characteristic impedance of the resonator and parameters relevant to a recent experiment, we observe that a semiclassical impedance model of the NIS junction reproduces the bias voltage dependence of the QCR-induced damping rate and frequency shift. For high characteristic impedances, we derive a Born–Markov master equation and use it to observe significant non-linearities in the QCR-induced dissipation and frequency shift. We further demonstrate that, in this regime, the QCR can be used to initialize the linear resonator into a non-thermal state even in the absence of any microwave drive.
Previous studies of photon-assisted tunneling through normal-metal–insulator–superconductor junctions have exhibited potential for providing a convenient tool to control the dissipation of quantum-electric circuits in situ. However, the current literature on such a quantum-circuit refrigerator (QCR) does not present a detailed description for the charge dynamics of the tunneling processes or the phase coherence of the open quantum system. Here, we derive a master equation describing both quantum-electric and charge degrees of freedom, and discover that typical experimental parameters of low temperature and yet lower charging energy yield a separation of time scales for the charge and quantum dynamics. Consequently, the minor effect of the different charge states can be taken into account by averaging over the charge distribution. We also consider applying an ac voltage to the tunnel junction, which enables control of the decay rate of a superconducting qubit over four orders of magnitude by changing the drive amplitude; we find an order-of-magnitude drop in the qubit excitation in 40 ns and a residual reset infidelity below 10−4. Furthermore, for the normal island, we consider the case of charging energy and single-particle level spacing large compared to the superconducting gap, i.e., a quantum dot. Although the decay rates arising from such a dot QCR appear low for use in qubit reset, the device can provide effective negative damping (gain) to the coupled microwave resonator. The Fano factor of such a millikelvin microwave source may be smaller than unity, with the latter value being reached close to the maximum attainable power.
Single-photon generation is an important proof of the underlying quantum nature of a physical process and a ubiquitous tool for scientific exploration, with applications ranging from spectroscopy and metrology to quantum computing.In the microwave regime, emission of antibunched radiation has so far relied on coherent control of Josephson qubits requiring precisely calibrated microwave pulses.In this work, we experimentally demonstrate the operation of a bright on-demand source of quantum microwave radiation driven by a simple dc voltage bias across a Josephson junction.Our source is based on photon emission into a microwave resonator through inelastic Cooper pair tunneling regulated by a high-impedance RC circuit preventing simultaneous tunnel events.It is characterized by its normalized second-order correlation function of g ð2Þ ð0Þ ≈ 0.43 corresponding to antibunching in the single-photon regime.Our device can be triggered, and its in situ tunable emission rate exceeds those obtained with current microwave singlephoton sources by more than 1 order of magnitude.
We focus on a recently experimentally realized scenario of normal-metal--insulator--superconductor tunnel junctions coupled to a superconducting resonator. We develop a first-principles theory to describe the effect of photon-assisted electron tunneling on the quantum state of the resonator. Our results are in very good quantitative agreement with the previous experiments on refrigeration and heating of the resonator using the photon-assisted tunneling, thus providing a stringent verification of the developed theory. Importantly, our results provide simple analytical estimates of the voltage-tunable coupling strength and temperature of the thermal reservoir formed by the photon-assisted tunneling. Consequently, they are used to introduce optimization principles for initialization of quantum devices using such a quantum-circuit refrigerator. Thanks to the first-principles nature of our approach, extension of the theory to the full spectrum of quantum electric devices seems plausible.