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arXiv:cond-mat/0412226 · Physical Review Letters

Measuring Non-Gaussian Fluctuations through Incoherent Cooper-Pair Current

Tero Tapio Heikkilä, Pauli Virtanen, Göran Johansson, Frank K. Wilhelm

Published Dec 8, 2004• 38 citations
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Abstract

We study a Josephson junction (JJ) in the regime of incoherent Cooper-pair tunneling, capacitively coupled to a nonequilibrium noise source. The current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of the JJ are sensitive to the excess voltage fluctuations in the source, and can thus be used for wideband noise detection. Under weak driving, the odd part of the I-V can be related to the second cumulant of noise, whereas the even part is due to the third cumulant. After calibration, one can measure the Fano factors for the noise source, and get information about the frequency dependence of the noise.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.93.247005

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We study a Josephson junction (JJ) in the regime of incoherent Cooper-pair tunneling, capacitively coupled to a nonequilibrium noise source. The current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of the JJ are sensitive to the excess voltage fluctuations in the source, and can thus be used for wideband noise detection. Under weak driving, the odd part of the I-V can be related to the second cumulant of noise, whereas the even part is due to the third cumulant. After calibration, one can measure the Fano factors for the noise source, and get information about the frequency dependence of the noise.
We measure current fluctuations of mesoscopic devices in the quantum regime, when the frequency is of the order of or higher than the applied voltage or temperature. Detection is designed to probe separately the absorption and emission contributions of current fluctuations, i.e. the positive and negative frequencies of the Fourier transformed nonsymmetrized noise correlator. It relies on measuring the quasiparticles photon assisted tunneling current across a superconductor-insulator-superconductor junction (the detector junction) caused by the excess current fluctuations generated by quasiparticles tunneling across a Josephson junction (the source junction). We demonstrate unambiguously that the negative and positive frequency parts of the nonsymmetrized noise correlator are separately detected and that the excess current fluctuations of a voltage biased Josephson junction present a strong asymmetry between emission and absorption.
Non-Gaussian fluctuations of the electrical current can be detected with a Josephson junction placed on-chip with the noise source. We present preliminary measurements with an NIS junction as a noise source, and a Josephson junction in the thermal escape regime as a noise detector. It is shown that the Josephson junction detects not only the average noise, which manifests itself as an increased effective temperature, but also the noise asymmetry. A theoretical description of the thermal escape of a Josephson junction in presence of noise with a non-zero third cumulant is presented, together with numerical simulations when the noise source is a tunnel junction with Poisson noise. Comparison between experiment and theory is discussed.
The current in a a Coulomb blockaded Josephson junction is sensitive to voltage or phase fluctuations in its electromagnetical environment. This property can be used to detect noise also from non‐Gaussian noise sources. We have experimentally studied IV‐curves of as a function of the shot noise current in a nearby tunnel junction. We observe a linear enhancement of zero‐bias conductance of the Josephson junction as a function of the shot noise power. Furthermore, with increasing shot noise power, the IV‐curves becomes asymmetric with a shift of minimum conductance and the appearance of a local conductance maximum. A quantitative explanation for the asymmetric features due to the non‐Gaussian noise sources is still an open question. There is also motivation to pursue modifications of the current scheme in order to detect individual statistical moments of noise and to connect different noise sources to the Josephson junction.
We propose to probe the distribution of current fluctuations by means of the escape probability histogram of a Josephson junction (JJ), obtained using very short bias current pulses in the adiabatic regime, where the low-frequency component of the current fluctuations plays a crucial role. We analyze the effect of the third cumulant on the histogram in the small skewness limit, and address two concrete examples assuming realistic parameters for the JJ. In the first one we study the effects due to fluctuations produced by a tunnel junction, finding that the signature of higher cumulants can be detected by taking the derivative of the escape probability with respect to current. In such a realistic situation, though, the determination of the whole distribution of current fluctuations requires an amplification of the cumulants. As a second example we consider magnetic flux fluctuations acting on a SQUID produced by a random telegraph source of noise.
We analyze how the dynamics in a current-biased mesoscopic Josephson junction can be probed by an additional smaller Josephson junction (probe). The probe is connected to a small island in between the Josephson junction and a resistor R >> R Q = h /4e 2 . The current through the resistor results in an effective current bias to the larger JJ. We model the steady state properties of the system under thermal and quantum fluctuations of the feed current. We use a density matrix approach based on the Born-Markov equations treating the current fluctuations perturbatively. The probe is also treated perturbatively assuming the regime of incoherent Cooper-pair tunneling. We find that the I - V characteristics across the probe shows traces of energy bands, Bloch oscillations and Zener tunneling in the current-biased Josephson junction.