Levitons in superconducting point contacts

Matteo Acciai, Flavio Ronetti, Dario Ferraro, Jérôme Rech, Thibaut Jonckheere, Maura Sassetti, and Thierry Martin
Phys. Rev. B 100, 085418 – Published 12 August 2019

Abstract

We investigate the transport properties of a superconducting quantum point contact in the presence of an arbitrary periodic drive. In particular, we calculate the DC current and noise in the tunnel limit, obtaining general expressions in terms of photoassisted probabilities. Interesting features can be observed when the frequency is comparable to the gap. Here, we show that quantized Lorentzian pulses minimize the excess noise, further strengthening the hierarchy among different periodic drives observed in the electron quantum optics domain. In this regime, the excess noise is directly connected to the overlap between electron and hole energy distributions driven out of equilibrium by the applied voltage. In the adiabatic limit, where the frequency of the drive is very small compared to the superconducting gap, we recover the conventional Shapiro-spikes physics in the supercurrent.

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  • Received 7 June 2019
  • Revised 30 July 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.100.085418

©2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Matteo Acciai1,2,3, Flavio Ronetti1,3, Dario Ferraro1,2, Jérôme Rech3, Thibaut Jonckheere3, Maura Sassetti1,2, and Thierry Martin3

  • 1Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Genova, Via Dodecaneso 33, 16146, Genova, Italy
  • 2SPIN-CNR, Via Dodecaneso 33, 16146, Genova, Italy
  • 3Aix Marseille Univ, Université de Toulon, CNRS, CPT, Marseille, France

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Issue

Vol. 100, Iss. 8 — 15 August 2019

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