ABSTRACT
Electrostatic charging affects the many-body spectrum of Andreev states, yet its influence on their microwave properties has not been elucidated. We developed a circuit quantum electrodynamics probe that, in addition to transition spectroscopy, measures the microwave susceptibility of different states of a semiconductor nanowire weak link with a single dominant (spin-degenerate) Andreev level. We found that the microwave susceptibility does not exhibit a particle-hole symmetry, which we qualitatively explain as an influence of Coulomb interaction. Moreover, our state-selective measurement reveals a large, π-phase shifted contribution to the response common to all many-body states which can be interpreted as arising from a phase-dependent continuum in the superconducting density of states.
Subject(s)
Static ElectricityABSTRACT
Two promising architectures for solid-state quantum information processing are based on electron spins electrostatically confined in semiconductor quantum dots and the collective electrodynamic modes of superconducting circuits. Superconducting electrodynamic qubits involve macroscopic numbers of electrons and offer the advantage of larger coupling, whereas semiconductor spin qubits involve individual electrons trapped in microscopic volumes but are more difficult to link. We combined beneficial aspects of both platforms in the Andreev spin qubit: the spin degree of freedom of an electronic quasiparticle trapped in the supercurrent-carrying Andreev levels of a Josephson semiconductor nanowire. We performed coherent spin manipulation by combining single-shot circuit-quantum-electrodynamics readout and spin-flipping Raman transitions and found a spin-flip time T S = 17 microseconds and a spin coherence time T 2E = 52 nanoseconds. These results herald a regime of supercurrent-mediated coherent spin-photon coupling at the single-quantum level.
ABSTRACT
The modern understanding of the Josephson effect in mesosopic devices derives from the physics of Andreev bound states, fermionic modes that are localized in a superconducting weak link. Recently, Josephson junctions constructed using semiconducting nanowires have led to the realization of superconducting qubits with gate-tunable Josephson energies. We have used a microwave circuit QED architecture to detect Andreev bound states in such a gate-tunable junction based on an aluminum-proximitized indium arsenide nanowire. We demonstrate coherent manipulation of these bound states, and track the bound-state fermion parity in real time. Individual parity-switching events due to nonequilibrium quasiparticles are observed with a characteristic timescale T_{parity}=160±10 µs. The T_{parity} of a topological nanowire junction sets a lower bound on the bandwidth required for control of Majorana bound states.
ABSTRACT
We report the realization of quantum microwave circuits using hybrid superconductor-semiconductor Josephson elements comprised of InAs nanowires contacted by NbTiN. Capacitively shunted single elements behave as transmon circuits with electrically tunable transition frequencies. Two-element circuits also exhibit transmonlike behavior near zero applied flux but behave as flux qubits at half the flux quantum, where nonsinusoidal current-phase relations in the elements produce a double-well Josephson potential. These hybrid Josephson elements are promising for applications requiring microwave superconducting circuits operating in a magnetic field.
ABSTRACT
The ferromagnetic proximity effect is studied in InAs nanowire based quantum dots strongly coupled to a ferromagnetic (F) and a superconducting (S) lead. The influence of the F lead is detected through the splitting of the spin-1/2 Kondo resonance. We show that the F lead induces a local exchange field on the quantum dot, which has varying amplitude and sign depending on the charge states. The interplay of the F and S correlations generates an exchange field related subgap feature.