Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics with Carbon-Nanotube-Based Superconducting Quantum Circuits

Hybrid circuit QED involves the study of coherent quantum physics in solid-state systems via their interactions with superconducting microwave circuits. Here we present a crucial step in the implementation of a hybrid superconducting qubit that employs a carbon nanotube as a Josephson junction. We realize the junction by contacting a carbon nanotube with a superconducting Pd/Al bilayer, and implement voltage tunability of the quantum circuit's frequency using a local electrostatic gate. We demonstrate a strong dispersive coupling to a coplanar waveguide resonator by investigating the gate-tunable resonator frequency. We extract qubit parameters from spectroscopy using dispersive readout and find qubit relaxation and coherence times in the range of 10-200ns

Pumping current of a Luttinger liquid with finite length

We study transport properties in a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid in the presence of two time-dependent point like weak impurities, taking into account finite-length effects. By employing analytical methods and performing a perturbation theory, we compute the backscattering pumping current (I_bs) in different regimes which can be established in relation to the oscillatory frequency of the impurities and to the frequency related to the length and the renormalized velocity (by the electron-electron interactions) of the charge density modes. We investigate the role played by the spatial position of the impurity potentials. We also show how the previous infinite length results for I_bs are modified by the finite size of the system.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Large-amplitude driving of a superconducting artificial atom: Interferometry, cooling, and amplitude spectroscopy

Superconducting persistent-current qubits are quantum-coherent artificial atoms with multiple, tunable energy levels. In the presence of large-amplitude harmonic excitation, the qubit state can be driven through one or more of the constituent energy-level avoided crossings. The resulting Landau-Zener-Stueckelberg (LZS) transitions mediate a rich array of quantum-coherent phenomena. We review here three experimental works based on LZS transitions: Mach-Zehnder-type interferometry between repeated LZS transitions, microwave-induced cooling, and amplitude spectroscopy. These experiments exhibit a remarkable agreement with theory, and are extensible to other solid-state and atomic qubit modalities. We anticipate they will find application to qubit state-preparation and control methods for quantum information science and technology.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

Para-infectious brain injury in COVID-19 persists at follow-up despite attenuated cytokine and autoantibody responses

To understand neurological complications of COVID-19 better both acutely and for recovery, we measured markers of brain injury, inflammatory mediators, and autoantibodies in 203 hospitalised participants; 111 with acute sera (1–11 days post-admission) and 92 convalescent sera (56 with COVID-19-associated neurological diagnoses). Here we show that compared to 60 uninfected controls, tTau, GFAP, NfL, and UCH-L1 are increased with COVID-19 infection at acute timepoints and NfL and GFAP are significantly higher in participants with neurological complications. Inflammatory mediators (IL-6, IL-12p40, HGF, M-CSF, CCL2, and IL-1RA) are associated with both altered consciousness and markers of brain injury. Autoantibodies are more common in COVID-19 than controls and some (including against MYL7, UCH-L1, and GRIN3B) are more frequent with altered consciousness. Additionally, convalescent participants with neurological complications show elevated GFAP and NfL, unrelated to attenuated systemic inflammatory mediators and to autoantibody responses. Overall, neurological complications of COVID-19 are associated with evidence of neuroglial injury in both acute and late disease and these correlate with dysregulated innate and adaptive immune responses acutely

Mucin-based stationary phases as tool for the characterization of drug-mucus interaction

Mucin glycoproteins belong to a class of high molecular weight, heavy glycosylated, proteins that together with water, salts and lipids constitute mucous secretions. Particular disease states (e.g. obstructive chronic bronchitis and ovarian tumor) are known to modify the composition and the thickness of those barriers. Therefore, it is important to address whether the absorption of potential drug candidates to be administered is influenced by the presence of interaction with this class of proteins. Typically, the methods adopted to characterize drug-protein interaction are dialysis, ultrafiltration and gel filtration. Besides these, bio-affinity chromatographic methods have demonstrated to be valuable tools offering the advantageous characteristics such as simplicity, efficiency, high-throughput capability and robustness. The present contribution reports on the synthesis and analytical characterization of a new chromatographic stationary phase based on covalently immobilized mucin and explores the use of LC-UV affinity zonal chromatography as a tool to screen drugs for their affinity to mucin. A series of different binding chemistries for the covalent linkage of mucin to silica-based supports as well as distinct immobilization protocols (static and dynamic) have been evaluated in order to optimize surface coverage. Resultant stationary phases have been characterized chromatographically by studying the effect of mobile phase and analyte structure on the distribution and retention of test compounds. As conclusive study, we report the evaluation of the retention characteristics of 41 drug-like compounds (having heterogeneous chemical properties) for their interaction with this novel stationary phase