Low-temperature transport in ultra-thin tungsten films grown by focused-ion-beam deposition

We have fabricated tungsten-containing films by focused-ion-beam (FIB)-induced chemical vapour deposition. By using ion-beam doses below 50 pC/μm² on a substrate of amorphous silicon, we have grown continuous films with thickness below 20 nm. The low-temperature electron transport properties were investigated by measuring current-voltage characteristics for temperatures down to 400 mK and in magnetic fields up to 8 T. FIB-deposited tungsten films are known to have an enhanced transition tem­perature compared to bulk tungsten [1], and films with thickness down to 50 nm have been investigated [2]. The films in this work are closer to the limit of two-dimensional system and are superconducting below 1 K, with a finite resistance at zero bias current. This work is supported by EPSRC. [1] E S Sadki, S Ooi, and K Hirata, Appl. Phys. Lett. 85, 6206 (2004); I J Luxmoore, I M Ross, A G Gullis, P W Fry, J Orr, P D Buckle, and J H Jefferson, Thin Solid Films 515, 6791 (2007). [2] W Li, J C Fenton, Y Wang, D W McComb, and P A Warburton, J. Appl. Phys. 104, 093913 (2008)

Materials for superconducting nanowires for quantum phase-slip devices

Quantum phase-slip processes in superconducting nanowires of suitably small cross-section have been proposed as the basis for a new current standard, based on physics dual to that for the Josephson voltage standard. The practical realisation of such devices presents several challenges. We consider the requirements which need to be met in constructing a nanowire quantum-phase-slip device and in particular the need to maximise R, the normalstate resistance of a length of nanowire equal to the superconducting coherence length. Titanium and niobium–silicon are promising materials for the nanowires

Controllable Tunneling of Single Flux Quanta Mediated by Quantum Phase Slip in Disordered Superconducting Loops

Quantum phase slip (QPS) is the exact dual to the well-known Josephson effect. Although there are numerous proposals for applications of QPS devices, experimental work to develop these remains in the relatively early stages. Significant barriers to exploiting QPS nanowires for useful technologies still exist, such as establishing robust nanowire-fabrication methods that allow coupling to low-loss circuits, and demonstrating control over the QPS process with an experimenter-controlled external bias. Here we report experiments that show that both of these barriers have been overcome. We present measurements at 300 mK of Nb N coplanar-waveguide (CPW) resonators embedded with nanowires fabricated using a neon focused ion beam. The internal quality factor exceeds 2 × 10 4 —significantly higher than previously reported in comparable experiments. The resonator frequency tunes periodically with an applied magnetic field, revealing tunneling of the order parameter that always occurs at half-integer values of the applied flux. In contrast to previous studies of single QPS, the order-parameter tunneling is shown to be adiabatic, demonstrating improved control over energy dissipation in nanowire QPS circuits. Our results highlight a promising pathway towards realizing low-loss nanowire-based QPS devices

Observation of coherent electron transport in self-catalysed InAs and InAs1–xSbx nanowires grown on silicon

We report the observation of phase coherent transport in catalyst-free InAs and InAs1–xSbx nanowires grown by molecular beam epitaxy on silicon (111) substrates. We investigate three different methods to gain information on the phase coherence length of the nanowires: first through the study of universal conductance fluctuations as a function of both magnetic field and gate voltage and then through localisation effects. The analysis of these different quantum effects gave consistent results and a phase-coherence length in the hundred nanometre range was extracted for all nanowires below 10 K. This demonstrates the potential of catalyst-free nanowires as building blocks for future quantum electronics devices directly integrated with silicon circuits

Embedding NbN Nanowires Into Quantum Circuits With a Neon Focused Ion Beam

Parasitic two-level systems are generally present in superconducting circuits as a result of conventional fabrication and processing, and these lead to noise and loss of coherence in quantum systems. We examine the use of a Ne focused ion beam for producing nanowires integrated into superconducting circuits with a minimized density of parasitic two-level systems. We report measurements of nanowires produced by Ne focused-ion-beam milling in NbN resonators. The resonator losses increase after the nanowire is fabricated, with the Q factor decreasing by ~30% to ~10 5, which is a factor 10-100 higher than in the most closely comparable circuits previously measured. This indicates that the Ne focused ion beam is a promising route for creating superconducting-nanowire-based devices with low levels of decoherence

Superconductivity of ultra-fine tungsten nanowires grown by focused-ion-beam direct-writing

The electrical properties of lateral ultra-fine tungsten nanowires, which were grown by focused-ion-beam-induced deposition with 1 pA ion-beam current, were investigated. Temperature-dependent electrical measurements show that the wires are conducting and have a superconducting transition with a transition temperature (T-c) about 5.1 K. Resistance vs. temperature measurements reveal that, with decreasing cross-sectional area, the wires display an increasingly broad superconducting transition. A residual resistive tail extending down to the low-temperature region is found only for the thinnest tungsten nanowire, which is 10 nm thick and 19 nm wide. The logarithm of the residual resistance of this wire appears as two linear sections as a function of temperature, one within 300 mK below T-c and the other extending down to the lowest measuring temperature of 4.26 K. Such features have previously been identified with phase slip processes. Our results are suggestive that the focused-ion-beam technique might be a potential approach to fabricate ultra-thin and ultra-narrow nanowires for the study of superconducting suppression in nanoscale materials and for maskless superconducting device fabrication. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

A Cost and Power Feasibility Analysis of Quantum Annealing for NextG Cellular Wireless Networks

In order to meet mobile cellular users' ever-increasing data demands, today's 4 G and 5 G wireless networks are designed mainly with the goal of maximizing spectral efficiency. While they have made progress in this regard, controlling the carbon footprint and operational costs of such networks remains a long-standing problem among network designers. This paper takes a long view on this problem, envisioning a NextG scenario where the network leverages quantum annealing for cellular baseband processing. We gather and synthesize insights on power consumption, computational throughput and latency, spectral efficiency, operational cost, and feasibility timelines surrounding quantum annealing technology. Armed with these data, we project the quantitative performance targets future quantum annealing hardware must meet in order to provide a computational and power advantage over CMOS hardware, while matching its whole-network spectral efficiency. Our quantitative analysis predicts that with 82.32 μ s problem latency and 2.68 M qubits, quantum annealing will achieve a spectral efficiency equal to CMOS while reducing power consumption by 41 kW (45% lower) in a Large MIMO base station with 400 MHz bandwidth and 64 antennas, and a 160 kW power reduction (55% lower) using 8.04 M qubits in a CRAN setting with three Large MIMO base stations

Nonlinear Quantum Processes in Superconducting Resonators Terminated by Neon-Focused-Ion-Beam-Fabricated Superconducting Nanowires

We have used a neon focused-ion-beam to fabricate both nanoscale Nb Dayem bridges and NbN phase-slip nanowires located at the short-circuited end of quarter-wavelength coplanar waveguide resonators. The Dayem bridge devices show flux-tunability and intrinsic quality factor exceeding 10 000 at 300 mK up to local fields of at least 60 mT. The NbN nanowires show signatures of incoherent quantum tunneling of flux at 300 mK

Locally suppressed transverse-field protocol for diabatic quantum annealing

Diabatic quantum annealing (DQA) is an alternative algorithm to adiabatic quantum annealing that can be used to circumvent the exponential slowdown caused by small minima in the annealing energy spectrum. We present the locally suppressed transverse-field (LSTF) protocol, a heuristic method for making stoquastic optimization problems compatible with DQA. We show that, provided an optimization problem intrinsically has magnetic frustration due to inhomogeneous local fields, a target qubit in the problem can always be manipulated to create a double minimum in the energy gap between the ground and first excited states during the evolution of the algorithm. Such a double energy minimum can be exploited to induce diabatic transitions to the first excited state and back to the ground state. In addition to its relevance to classical and quantum algorithmic speedups, the LSTF protocol enables DQA proof-of-principle and physics experiments to be performed on existing hardware, provided independent controls exist for the transverse qubit magnetization fields. We discuss the implications on the coherence requirements of the quantum annealing hardware when using the LSTF protocol, considering specifically the cases of relaxation and dephasing. We show that the relaxation rate of a large system can be made to depend only on the target qubit, presenting opportunities for the characterization of the decohering environment in a quantum annealing processor