Related papers: Coulomb Blockade due to Quantum Phase-Slips Illust…
A small superconducting electrode (a single-Cooper-pair box) connected to a reservoir via a Josephson junction constitutes an artificial two-level system, in which two charge states that differ by 2e are coupled by tunneling of Cooper…
For a quantum dot (QD) in the intermediate regime between integrable and fully chaotic, the widths of single-particle levels naturally differ by orders of magnitude. In particular, the width of one strongly coupled level may be larger than…
It has long been thought that macroscopic phase coherence breaks down in effectively lower-dimensional superconducting systems even at zero temperature due to enhanced topological quantum phase fluctuations. In quasi-1D wires, these…
Charge fluctuations from gate bias and background traps severely limit the performance of a charge qubit in a Cooper-pair box (CPB). Here we present an experimentally realizable method to control the decoherence effects of these charge…
Amplitude of the Coulomb blockade oscillations is calculated for a single-mode Josephson junction with arbitrary electron transparency $D$. It is shown that the Coulomb blockade is suppressed in ballistic junctions with $D\to 1$. The…
Superconducting circuits for quantum information processing are often described theoretically in terms of a discrete charge, or equivalently, a compact phase/flux, at each node in the circuit. Here we revisit the consequences of lifting…
We analyze an interplay between Coulomb blockade and quantum fluctuations in a coherent conductor (with dimensionless conductance $g \gtrsim 1$) attached to an Ohmic shunt. We demonstrate that at T=0 the system can be either an insulator or…
Rapid miniaturization of electronic devices and circuits demands profound understanding of fluctuation phenomena at the nanoscale. Superconducting nanowires -- serving as important building blocks for such devices -- may seriously suffer…
Interfacing s-wave superconductors and quantum spin Hall edges produces time-reversal-invariant topological superconductivity of a type that can not arise in strictly 1D systems. With the aim of establishing sharp fingerprints of this novel…
We have measured the current-voltage characteristics of small-capacitance single Josephson junctions at low temperatures (T < 0.04 K), where the strength of the coupling between the single junction and the electromagnetic environment was…
A long one-dimensional wire with a finite density of strong random impurities is modelled as a chain of weakly coupled quantum dots. At low temperature T and applied voltage V its resistance is limited by "breaks": randomly occuring…
The non-dissipative non-linearity of a Josephson junction converts macroscopic superconducting circuits into artificial atoms, enabling some of the best controlled quantum bits (qubits) today. Three fundamental types of superconducting…
Two strongly coupled quantum dots are theoretically and experimentally investigated. In the conductance measurements of a GaAs based low-dimensional system additional features to the Coulomb blockade have been detected at low temperatures.…
We have measured the Cooper Pair Transistor (CPT) in a tunable electromagnetic environment consisting of four one-dimensional SQUID arrays. The transport properties of the CPT in the high impedance limit, Z_env>>R_Q=6.45~k\Omega, are…
Niobium thin film wires were fabricated using electron beam lithography with a four layer liftoff mask system, and subsequently thinned by anodisation. The resistance along the wire was monitored in situ and trimmed by controlling the…
Superconducting devices subject to strong charging energy interactions and Coulomb blockade are one of the key elements for the development of nanoelectronics and constitute common building blocks of quantum computation platforms and…
We investigate the energy and phase relaxation of a superconducting qubit caused by a single quasiparticle. In our model, the qubit is an isolated system consisting of a small island (Cooper-pair box) and a larger superconductor (reservoir)…
We study theoretically a quantum dot in the quantum Hall regime that is strongly coupled to a single lead via a point contact. We find that even when the transmission through the point contact is perfect, important features of the Coulomb…
The Josephson junction is a building block of quantum circuits. Its behavior, well understood when treated as an isolated entity, is strongly affected by coupling to an electromagnetic environment. In 1983, Schmid predicted that a Josephson…
Superconducting qubits are one of the most advanced candidates to realize scalable and fault-tolerant quantum computing. Despite recent significant advancements in the qubit lifetimes, the origin of the loss mechanism for state-of-the-art…