Keijsers, Shklyarevskii and van Kempen Reply

Answer to the Comment on ``Point-Contact Study of Fast and Slow Two-Level Fluctuators in Metallic Glasses'' by Jan von Delft et al.Comment: 3 pages, no figures, accepted Phys. Rev. Letter

Loss of quantum coherence due to non-stationary glass fluctuations

Low-temperature dynamics of insulating glasses is dominated by a macroscopic concentration of tunneling two-level systems (TTLS). The distribution of the switching/relaxation rates of TTLS is exponentially broad, which results in non-equilibrium state of the glass at arbitrarily long time-scales. Due to the electric dipolar nature, the switching TTLS generate fluctuating electromagnetic fields. We study the effect of the non-thermal slow fluctuators on the dephasing of a solid state qubit. We find that at low enough temperatures, non-stationary contribution can dominate the stationary (thermal) one, and discuss how this effect can be minimized.Comment: 4 page

Zero-bias anomalies of point contact resistance due to adiabatic electron renormalization of dynamical defects

We study effect of the adiabatic electron renormalization on the parameters of the dynamical defects in the ballistic metallic point contact. The upper energy states of the ``dressed'' defect are shown to give a smaller contribution to a resistance of the contact than the lower energy ones. This holds both for the "classical" renormalization related to defect coupling with average local electron density and for the "mesoscopic" renormalization caused by the mesoscopic fluctuations of electronic density the dynamical defects are coupled with. In the case of mesoscopic renormalization one may treat the dynamical defect as coupled with Friedel oscillations originated by the other defects, both static and mobile. Such coupling lifts the energy degeneracy of the states of the dynamical defects giving different mesoscopic contribution to resistance, and provides a new model for the fluctuator as for the object originated by the electronic mesoscopic disorder rather than by the structural one. The correlation between the defect energy and the defect contribution to the resistance leads to zero-temperature and zero-bias anomalies of the point contact resistance. A comparison of these anomalies with those predicted by the Two Channel Kondo Model (TCKM) is made. It is shown, that although the proposed model is based on a completely different from TCKM physical background, it leads to a zero-bias anomalies of the point contact resistance, which are qualitatively similar to TCKM predictions.Comment: 6 pages, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Magnetoresistance of p-GaAs/AlGaAs structures in the vicinity of metal-insulator transition: Effect of superconducting leads

Experimental and theoretical studies on transport in semiconductor samples with superconducting electrodes are reported. We focus on the samples close to metal-insulator transition. In metallic samples, a peak of negative magnetoresistance at fields lower than critical magnetic field of the leads was observed. This peak is attributed to restoration of a single-particle tunneling emerging with suppression of superconductivity. The experimental results allow us to estimate tunneling transparency of the boundary between superconductor and metal. In contrast, for the insulating samples no such a peak was observed. We explain this behavior as related to properties of transport through the contact between superconductor and hopping conductor. This effect can be used to discriminate between weak localization and strong localization regimes.Comment: 10 pages, 3 fi

Point contact spectroscopy of hopping transport: effects of a magnetic field

The conductance of a point contact between two hopping insulators is expected to be dominated by the individual localized states in its vicinity. Here we study the additional effects due to an external magnetic field. Combined with the measured conductance, the measured magnetoresistance provides detailed information on these states (e.g. their localization length, the energy difference and the hopping distance between them). We also calculate the statistics of this magnetoresistance, which can be collected by changing the gate voltage in a single device. Since the conductance is dominated by the quantum interference of particular mesoscopic structures near the point contact, it is predicted to exhibit Aharonov-Bohm oscillations, which yield information on the geometry of these structures. These oscillations also depend on local spin accumulation and correlations, which can be modified by the external field. Finally, we also estimate the mesoscopic Hall voltage due to these structures.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figur

Non-Gaussian dephasing in flux qubits due to 1/f-noise

Recent experiments by F. Yoshihara et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 167001 (2006)] and by K. Kakuyanagi et al. (cond-mat/0609564) provided information on decoherence of the echo signal in Josephson-junction flux qubits at various bias conditions. These results were interpreted assuming a Gaussian model for the decoherence due to 1/f noise. Here we revisit this problem on the basis of the exactly solvable spin-fluctuator model reproducing detailed properties of the 1/f noise interacting with a qubit. We consider the time dependence of the echo signal and conclude that the results based on the Gaussian assumption need essential reconsideration.Comment: Improved fitting parameters, new figur

Spontaneous current generation in gated nanostructures

We have observed an unusual dc current spontaneously generated in the conducting channel of a short-gated GaAs transistor. The magnitude and direction of this current critically depend upon the voltage applied to the gate. We propose that it is initiated by the injection of hot electrons from the gate that relax via phonon emission. The phonons then excite secondary electrons from asymmetrically distributed impurities in the channel, which leads to the observed current

Decoherence in qubits due to low-frequency noise

The efficiency of the future devices for quantum information processing is limited mostly by the finite decoherence rates of the qubits. Recently a substantial progress was achieved in enhancing the time, which a solid-state qubit demonstrates a coherent dynamics. This progress is based mostly on a successful isolation of the qubits from external decoherence sources. Under these conditions the material-inherent sources of noise start to play a crucial role. In most cases the noise that quantum device demonstrate has 1/f spectrum. This suggests that the environment that destroys the phase coherence of the qubit can be thought of as a system of two-state fluctuators, which experience random hops between their states. In this short review we discuss the current state of the theory of the decoherence due to the qubit interaction with the fluctuators. We describe the effect of such an environment on different protocols of the qubit manipulations - free induction and echo signal. It turns out that in many important cases the noise produced by the fluctuators is non-Gaussian. Consequently the results of the interaction of the qubit with the fluctuators are not determined by the pair correlation function only. We describe the effect of the fluctuators using so-called spin-fluctuator model. Being quite realistic this model allows one to evaluate the qubit dynamics in the presence of one fluctuator exactly. This solution is found, and its features, including non-Gaussian effects are analyzed in details. We extend this consideration for the systems of large number of fluctuators, which interact with the qubit and lead to the 1/f noise. We discuss existing experiments on the Josephson qubit manipulation and try to identify non-Gaussian behavior.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure

Nonlinear absorption of surface acoustic waves by composite fermions

Absorption of surface acoustic waves by a two-dimensional electron gas in a perpendicular magnetic field is considered. The structure of such system at the filling factor $\nu$ close to 1/2 can be understood as a gas of {\em composite fermions}. It is shown that the absorption at $\nu =1/2$ can be strongly nonlinear, while small deviation form 1/2 will restore the linear absorption. Study of nonlinear absorption allows one to determine the force acting upon the composite fermions from the acoustic wave at turning points of their trajectories.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Europhysics letter