Related papers: Parity effect in superconducting aluminum single e…
We present experiments on single Cooper-pair transistors made of two different superconducting materials. We chose Ti and Al to create an energy gap profile such that the island has a higher gap than the leads, thereby acting as a barrier…
The performance of superconducting devices is often degraded by the uncontrolled appearance and disappearance of quasiparticles, a process known as poisoning. We demonstrate electrostatic control of quasiparticle poisoning in the form of…
We study single-electron charging events in an Al/InAs nanowire hybrid system with deliberately introduced gapless regions. The occupancy of a Coulomb island is detected using a nearby radio-frequency quantum dot as a charge sensor. We…
We increase the isolation of a superconducting double dot from its environment by galvanically isolating it from any electrodes. We probe it using high frequency reflectometry techniques, find 2e-periodic behaviour, and characterise the…
Designing the spatial profile of the superconducting gap -- gap engineering -- has long been recognized as an effective way of controlling quasiparticles in superconducting devices. In aluminum films, their thickness modulates the gap;…
We have fabricated single-Cooper-pair transistors in which the spatial profile of the superconducting gap energy was controlled by oxygen doping. The profile dramatically affects the switching current \textit{vs.} gate voltage curve of the…
The performance of various superconducting devices operating at ultra-low temperatures is impaired by the presence of non-equilibrium quasiparticles. Inelastic quasiparticle (QP) tunneling across Josephson junctions in superconducting…
The achievable fidelity of many nanoelectronic devices based on superconducting aluminum is limited by either the density of residual nonequilibrium quasiparticles n_qp or the density of quasiparticle states in the gap, characterized by…
Identifying, quantifying, and suppressing decoherence mechanisms in qubits are important steps towards the goal of engineering a quantum computer or simulator. Superconducting circuits offer flexibility in qubit design; however, their…
We report on the effect of the back-action of a Single Cooper Pair Transistor electrometer (E) on the measurement of charge on the island of a superconducting box (B). The charge is e-periodic in the gate bias of B when E is operated near…
Recent research shows that quasiparticle-induced decoherence of superconducting qubits depends on the superconducting-gap asymmetry originating from the different thicknesses of the top and bottom films in Al/AlO$_x$/Al junctions. Magnetic…
We demonstrate the operation of a differential single Cooper-pair box, a charge qubit consisting of two aluminum islands, isolated from ground, coupled by a pair of small-area Josephson junctions, and read out with a superconducting…
We propose the concept of a quantized single-electron source based on the interplay between Coulomb blockade and magnetic flux-controllable superconducting proximity effect. We show that flux dependence of the induced energy gap in the…
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 investigate effects of quasiparticle poisoning in a Majorana island with strong tunnel coupling to normal-metal leads. In addition to the main Coulomb blockade diamonds, "shadow" diamonds appear, shifted by 1e in gate voltage, consistent…
The number of electrons in small metallic or semiconducting islands is quantized. When tunnelling is enabled via opaque barriers this number can change by an integer. In superconductors the addition is in units of two electron charges (2e),…
We investigate single quasiparticle excitation dynamics on a small superconducting aluminum island connected to normal metallic leads by tunnel junctions. We find the island to be free of excitations within the measurement resolution…
We present a theoretical analysis of quasiparticle poisoning in Coulomb-blockaded Majorana fermion systems tunnel-coupled to normal-conducting leads. Taking into account finite-energy quasiparticles, we derive the effective low-energy…
We study the low temperature thermodynamic properties of a superconducting double-island qubit. For an odd number of electrons in the device, the ground state corresponds to the intrinsic quasiparticle bound to the tunneling contact. The…
We present a superconducting device showing a clear parity effect in the number of electrons, even when there is, on average, a single nonequilibrium quasiparticle present and the parity of the island switches due to quasiparticles…