English

Voltage staircase in a current-biased quantum-dot Josephson junction

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2021-03-31 v3 Superconductivity

Abstract

We calculate the current-voltage (I-V) characteristic of a Josephson junction containing a resonant level in the weakly coupled regime (resonance width small compared to the superconducting gap). The phase ϕ\phi across the junction becomes time dependent in response to a DC current bias. Rabi oscillations in the Andreev levels produce a staircase I-V characteristic. The number of voltage steps counts the number of Rabi oscillations per 2π2\pi increment of ϕ\phi, providing a way to probe the coherence of the qubit in the absence of any external AC driving. The phenomenology is the same as the "Majorana-induced DC Shapiro steps in topological Josephson junctions" of Phys. Rev. B 102, 140501(R) (2020) -- but now for a non-topological Andreev qubit.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.03114,
  title  = {Voltage staircase in a current-biased quantum-dot Josephson junction},
  author = {D. O. Oriekhov and Y. Cheipesh and C. W. J. Beenakker},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.03114},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

7 pages, 7 figures, Appendix added

R2 v1 2026-06-23T22:52:11.814Z