No Arabic abstract
We present a new nanoscale superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) whose interference pattern can be shifted electrically in-situ. The device consists of a nanoscale four-terminal/four-junction SQUID fabricated at the apex of a sharp pipette using a self-aligned three-step deposition of Pb. In contrast to conventional two-terminal/two-junction SQUIDs that display optimal sensitivity when flux biased to about a quarter of the flux quantum, the additional terminals and junctions allow optimal sensitivity at arbitrary applied flux, thus eliminating the magnetic field blind spots. We demonstrate spin sensitivity of 5 to 8 $mu_B/text{Hz}^{1/2}$ over a continuous field range of 0 to 0.5 T, with promising applications for nanoscale scanning magnetic imaging.
Nanoscale superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) demonstrate record sensitivities to small magnetic moments, but are typically sensitive only to the field component that is normal to the plane of the SQUID and out-of-plane with respect to the scanned surface. We report on a nanoscale three-junction Pb SQUID which is fabricated on the apex of a sharp tip. Because of its three-dimensional structure, it exhibits a unique tunable sensitivity to both in-plane and out-of-plane fields. We analyze the two-dimensional interference pattern from both numerical and experimental points of view. This device is integrated into a scanning microscope and its ability to independently measure the different components of the magnetic field with outstanding spin sensitivity better than $5 frac{mu_B}{mathrm{Hz}^{1/2}}$ is demonstrated. This highlights its potential as a local probe of nanoscale magnetic structures.
We create a Josephson parametric amplifier from a transmission line resonator whose inner conductor is made from a series SQUID array. By changing the magnetic flux through the SQUID loops, we are able to adjust the circuits resonance frequency and, consenquently, the center of the amplified band, between 4 and 7.8 GHz. We observe that the amplifier has gains as large as 28 dB and infer that it adds less than twice the input vacuum noise.
A phase-slip flux qubit, exactly dual to a charge qubit, is composed of a superconducting loop interrupted by a phase-slip junction. Here we propose a tunable phase-slip flux qubit by replacing the phase-slip junction with a charge-related superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) consisting of two phase-slip junctions connected in series with a superconducting island. This charge-SQUID acts as an effective phase-slip junction controlled by the applied gate voltage and can be used to tune the energy-level splitting of the qubit. Also, we show that a large inductance inserted in the loop can reduce the inductance energy and consequently suppress the dominating flux noise of the phase-slip flux qubit. This enhanced phase-slip flux qubit is exactly dual to a transmon qubit.
Establishment of phase-coherence and a non-dissipative (super)current between two weakly coupled superconductors, known as the Josephson effect, plays a foundational role in basic physics and applications to metrology, precision sensing, high-speed digital electronics, and quantum computing. The junction ranges from planar insulating oxides to single atoms, molecules, semiconductor nanowires, and generally to any finite-size coherent conductor. Recently, junctions of more than two superconducting terminals gained broad attention in the context of braiding of Majorana fermions in the solid state for fault-tolerant quantum computing, and accessing physics and topology in dimensions higher than three. Here we report the first observation of Josephson effect in 3- and 4-terminal junctions, fabricated in a top-down fashion from a semiconductor/superconductor (InAs/Al) epitaxial two-dimensional heterostructure. Due to interactions, the critical current of an N-terminal junction becomes the boundary of an (N-1)-dimensional manifold of simultaneously allowed supercurrents. The measured shapes of such manifolds are explained by the scattering theory of mesoscopic superconductivity, and they can be remarkably sensitive to the junctions symmetry class. Furthermore, we observed a notably high-order (up to 8) multiple Andreev reflections simultaneously across every terminals pair, which verifies the multi-terminal nature of normal scattering and a high interface quality in our devices. Given the previously shown gate-control of carrier density and evidence of spin-orbit scattering in InAs/Al heterostructures, and device compatibility with other 2D materials, the multi-terminal Josephson effect reported here can become a testbed for physics and applications of topological superconductivity.
Second-order topological superconductors (SOTSs) host localized Majorana fermions and provide a new platform for topological quantum computation. We propose a remarkable and feasible way to realize networks based on SOTSs which allow to nucleate and braid Majorana bound states (MBSs) in an all-electrical manner without fine-tuning. The proposed setups are scalable in a straightforward way and can accommodate any even number of MBSs. Moreover, the MBSs in the networks allow defining qubits whose states can be initialized and read out by measuring Josephson currents flowing between SOTS islands. Our proposal can be implemented in monolayers of $text{FeTe}{}_{1-x}text{Se}_{x}$, monolayers of 1T-WTe$_2$, and inverted Hg(Cd)Te quantum wells in proximity to conventional superconductors.