Studying Light-Harvesting Models with Superconducting Circuits

The process of photosynthesis, the main source of energy in the animate world, converts sunlight into chemical energy. The surprisingly high efficiency of this process is believed to be enabled by an intricate interplay between the quantum nature of molecular structures in photosynthetic complexes and their interaction with the environment. Investigating these effects in biological samples is challenging due to their complex and disordered structure. Here we experimentally demonstrate a new approach for studying photosynthetic models based on superconducting quantum circuits. In particular, we demonstrate the unprecedented versatility and control of our method in an engineered three-site model of a pigment protein complex with realistic parameters scaled down in energy by a factor of $10^5$. With this system we show that the excitation transport between quantum coherent sites disordered in energy can be enabled through the interaction with environmental noise. We also show that the efficiency of the process is maximized for structured noise resembling intramolecular phononic environments found in photosynthetic complexes.Comment: 8+12 pages, 4+12 figure

Dynamical polarization of the fermion parity in a nanowire Josephson junction

Josephson junctions in InAs nanowires proximitized with an Al shell can host gate-tunable Andreev bound states. Depending on the bound state occupation, the fermion parity of the junction can be even or odd. Coherent control of Andreev bound states has recently been achieved within each parity sector, but it is impeded by incoherent parity switches due to excess quasiparticles in the superconducting environment. Here, we show that we can polarize the fermion parity dynamically using microwave pulses by embedding the junction in a superconducting LC resonator. We demonstrate polarization up to 94% $\pm$ 1% (89% $\pm$ 1%) for the even (odd) parity as verified by single shot parity-readout. Finally, we apply this scheme to probe the flux-dependent transition spectrum of the even or odd parity sector selectively, without any post-processing or heralding

Electric field tunable superconductor-semiconductor coupling in Majorana nanowires

We study the effect of external electric fields on superconductor-semiconductor coupling by measuring the electron transport in InSb semiconductor nanowires coupled to an epitaxially grown Al superconductor. We find that the gate voltage induced electric fields can greatly modify the coupling strength, which has consequences for the proximity induced superconducting gap, effective g-factor, and spin-orbit coupling, which all play a key role in understanding Majorana physics. We further show that level repulsion due to spin-orbit coupling in a finite size system can lead to seemingly stable zero bias conductance peaks, which mimic the behavior of Majorana zero modes. Our results improve the understanding of realistic Majorana nanowire systems.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, supplemental information as ancillary fil

Nanowire Josephson junctions in superconducting circuits

The Josephson effect is a quintessential topic of condensed matter physics. It has stimulated decades of fundamental research, leading to a plethora of applications from metrology to outer space. In addition, it is set to play a crucial role in the development of quantum computers, forming the dissipationless non-linear inductance that lies at the core of superconducting qubits. While they are traditionally realized using oxide based tunnel barriers, in this thesis we construct Josephson junctions from non-insulating materials such as semiconducting nanowires and quantum dots. We investigate how their highly nontrivial interplay with superconductivity can lead to new effects, both of fundamental interest and of relevance for quantum applications. To study these effects we make use the exhaustive toolbox available for superconducting circuits, allowing us to probe the junction behavior to beyond what is possible with conventional transport techniques.The first experimental chapter of this thesis examines the behaviour of a transmon that hosts a highly transparent semiconducting weak-link as the Josephson junction. In this system we find spectroscopic evidence for the predicted vanishing of Coulomb effects in open superconducting islands, in accordance with theoretical predictions from 1999.In the second experiment we deterministically place a quantum dot inside the junction of a transmon circuit. We then demonstrate that by using microwave spectroscopy we are able to accurately probe the energy-phase relationship of the Josephson junction over a vast regime of parameter space. This reveals the remnants of a quantum phase transition, and allows us to probe the time dynamics of the junction parity.We subsequently use the same type of device to reveal the predicted spin-splitting of the Andreev bound states in a quantum dot with superconducting leads, as brought about by the spin-orbit interaction. When combined with a magnetic field, this is shown to result in the anomalous Josephson effect. Furthermore, we demonstrate that transitions between the spin-split quantum dot states can be directly driven with microwaves.This motivated the investigation of a novel superconducting spin qubit, performed in the fourth experiment. Here we demonstrate rapid, all-electric qubit manipulation in addition to detailed coherence characterization. We ultimately show signatures of strong coherent coupling between the superconducting spin qubit and the transmon into which it is embedded, setting the stage for future research of this nascent qubit platform.In the fifth and final experiment, we utilize a different approach compared to the preceding chapters. While we once-more construct transmons based on semiconducting weak-links, we now do so to leverage the intrinsic magnetic field resilience of semiconducting nanowires. This allows us to use a single device to study the mitigation of phonon-induced quasiparticle losses by trapping the phonons using both super and normal-state conductors. This thesis concludes by discussing several ideas and proposals that aim to leverage the alternative Josephson junctions studied in this thesis. Combined with the results of the preceding chapters, this shows that hybrid superconducting circuits can be used to obtain deep insights into the fundamental physics governing their constituent junctions, and opens avenues towards building better qubits.QRD/Kouwenhoven La

Effects of Gate-Induced Electric Fields on Semiconductor Majorana Nanowires

We study the effect of gate-induced electric fields on the properties of semiconductor-superconductor hybrid nanowires which represent a promising platform for realizing topological superconductivity and Majorana zero modes. Using a self-consistent Schrödinger-Poisson approach that describes the semiconductor and the superconductor on equal footing, we are able to access the strong tunneling regime and identify the impact of an applied gate voltage on the coupling between semiconductor and superconductor. We discuss how physical parameters such as the induced superconducting gap and Landé g factor in the semiconductor are modified by redistributing the density of states across the interface upon application of an external gate voltage. Finally, we map out the topological phase diagram as a function of magnetic field and gate voltage for InAs/Al nanowires.QRD/Kouwenhoven LabQuTec

Gate-Tunable Field-Compatible Fluxonium

Hybrid superconducting circuits, which integrate nonsuperconducting elements into a circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) architecture, expand the possible applications of cQED. Building hybrid circuits that work in large magnetic fields presents even further possibilities, such as the probing of spin-polarized Andreev bound states and the investigation of topological superconductivity. Here we present a magnetic-field compatible hybrid fluxonium with an electrostatically tuned semiconducting nanowire as its nonlinear element. We operate the fluxonium in magnetic fields up to 1 T and use it to observe the f0-Josephson effect. This combination of gate tunability and field compatibility opens avenues for the control of spin-polarized phenomena using superconducting circuits and enables the use of the fluxonium as a readout device for topological qubits.</p

Mitigation of Quasiparticle Loss in Superconducting Qubits by Phonon Scattering

Quantum error correction will be an essential ingredient in realizing fault-tolerant quantum computing. However, most correction schemes rely on the assumption that errors are sufficiently uncorrelated in space and time. In superconducting qubits, this assumption is drastically violated in the presence of ionizing radiation, which creates bursts of high-energy phonons in the substrate. These phonons can break Cooper pairs in the superconductor and, thus, create quasiparticles over large areas, consequently reducing qubit coherence across the quantum device in a correlated fashion. A potential mitigation technique is to place large volumes of normal or superconducting metal on the device, capable of reducing the phonon energy to below the superconducting gap of the qubits. To investigate the effectiveness of this method, we fabricate a quantum device with four nominally identical nanowire-based transmon qubits. On the device, half of the niobium-titanium-nitride ground plane is replaced with aluminum (Al), which has a significantly lower superconducting gap. We deterministically inject high-energy phonons into the substrate by voltage biasing a galvanically isolated Josephson junction. In the presence of the small-gap material, we find a factor of 2–5 less degradation in the injection-dependent qubit lifetimes and observe that the undesired excited qubit state population is mitigated by a similar factor. We furthermore turn the Al normal with a magnetic field, finding no change in the phonon protection. This suggests that the efficacy of the protection in our device is not limited by the size of the superconducting gap in the Al ground plane. Our results provide a promising foundation for protecting superconducting-qubit processors against correlated errors from ionizing radiation

Microwave spectroscopy of interacting Andreev spins

Andreev bound states are fermionic states localized in weak links between superconductors which can be occupied with spinful quasiparticles. Microwave experiments using superconducting circuits with InAs/Al nanowire Josephson junctions have recently enabled probing and coherent manipulation of Andreev states but have remained limited to zero or small magnetic fields. Here, we use a flux-tunable superconducting circuit compatible in magnetic fields up to 1T to perform spectroscopy of spin-polarized Andreev states up to ∼250mT, beyond which the spectrum becomes gapless. We identify singlet and triplet states of two quasiparticles occupying different Andreev states through their dispersion in magnetic field. These states are split by exchange interaction and couple via spin-orbit coupling, analogously to two-electron states in quantum dots. We also show that the magnetic field allows to drive a direct spin-flip transition of a single quasiparticle trapped in the junction. Finally, we measure a gate- and field-dependent anomalous phase shift of the Andreev spectrum, of magnitude up to ∼0.7π. Our observations demonstrate alternative ways to manipulate Andreev states in a magnetic field and reveal spin-polarized triplet states that carry supercurrent.QRD/Kouwenhoven LabQRD/Goswami LabQN/Kouwenhoven LabAndersen La

Dynamical Polarization of the Fermion Parity in a Nanowire Josephson Junction

Josephson junctions in InAs nanowires proximitized with an Al shell can host gate-tunable Andreev bound states. Depending on the bound state occupation, the fermion parity of the junction can be even or odd. Coherent control of Andreev bound states has recently been achieved within each parity sector, but it is impeded by incoherent parity switches due to excess quasiparticles in the superconducting environment. Here, we show that we can polarize the fermion parity dynamically using microwave pulses by embedding the junction in a superconducting LC resonator. We demonstrate polarization up to 94%±1% (89%±1%) for the even (odd) parity as verified by single shot parity readout. Finally, we apply this scheme to probe the flux-dependent transition spectrum of the even or odd parity sector selectively, without any postprocessing or heralding.QRD/Kouwenhoven LabQN/Wimmer GroupBUS/Quantum Delf