Depinning of disordered bosonic chains

We consider one-dimensional bosonic chains with a repulsive boson-boson interaction that decays exponentially on large length-scales. This model describes transport of Cooper-pairs in a Josepshon junction array, or transport of magnetic flux quanta in quantum-phase-slip ladders, i.e. arrays of superconducting wires in a ladder-configuration that allow for the coherent tunnelling of flux quanta. In the low-frequency, long wave-length regime these chains can be mapped to an effective model of a one-dimensional elastic field in a disordered potential. The onset of transport in these systems, when biased by external voltage, is described by the standard depinning theory of elastic media in disordered pinning potentials. We numerically study the regimes that are of relevance for quantum-phase-slip ladders. These are (i) very short chains and (ii) the regime of weak disorder. For chains shorter than the typical pinning length, i.e., the Larkin length, the chains reach a saturation regime where the depinning voltage does not depend on the decay length of the repulsive interaction. In the regime of weak disorder we find an emergent correlation length-scale that depends on the disorder strength. For arrays shorter than this length the onset of transport is similar to the clean arrays, i.e., is due to the penetration of solitons into the array. We discuss the depinning scenarios for longer arrays in this regime.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Influence of two-level fluctuators on adiabatic passage techniques

We study the process of Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP) under the influence of a non-trivial solid-state environment, particularly the effect of two-level fluctuators (TLFs) as they are frequently present in solid-state devices. When the amplitudes of the driving-pulses used in STIRAP are in resonance with the level spacing of the fluctuators the quality of the protocol, i.e., the transferred population decreases sharply. In general the effect can not be reduced by speeding up the STIRAP process. We also discuss the effect of a structured noise environment on the process of Coherent Tunneling by Adiabatic Passage (CTAP). The effect of a weakly structured environment or TLFs with short coherence times on STIRAP and CTAP can be described by the Bloch-Redfield theory. For a strongly structured environment a higher-dimensional approach must be used, where the TLFs are treated as part of the system.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Breaking time-reversal symmetry with a superconducting flux capacitor

We present the design of a passive, on-chip microwave circulator based on a ring of superconducting tunnel junctions. We investigate two distinct physical realisations, based on either Josephson junctions (JJ) or quantum phase slip elements (QPS), with microwave ports coupled either capacitively (JJ) or inductively (QPS) to the ring structure. A constant bias applied to the center of the ring provides the symmetry breaking (effective) magnetic field, and no microwave or rf bias is required. We find that this design offers high isolation even when taking into account fabrication imperfections and environmentally induced bias perturbations and find a bandwidth in excess of 500 MHz for realistic device parameters.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, including supplementary material - published as "Passive on-chip, superconducting circulator using rings of tunnel junctions

De-pinning of disordered bosonic chains

We consider onset of transport (de-pinning) in one-dimensional bosonic chains with a repulsive boson?boson interaction that decays exponentially on large length-scales. Our study is relevant for (i) de-pinning of Cooper-pairs in Josephson junction arrays; (ii) de-pinning of magnetic flux quanta in quantum-phase-slip ladders, i.e. arrays of superconducting wires in a ladder-configuration that allow for the coherent tunneling of flux quanta. In the low-frequency, long wave-length regime these chains can be mapped onto an effective model of a one-dimensional elastic field in a disordered potential. The standard de-pinning theories address infinitely long systems in two limiting cases: (a) of uncorrelated disorder (zero correlation length); (b) of long range power-law correlated disorder (infinite correlation length). In this paper we study numerically chains of finite length in the intermediate case of long but finite disorder correlation length. This regime is of relevance for, e.g., the experimental systems mentioned above. We study the interplay of three length scales: the system length, the interaction range, the correlation length of disorder. In particular, we observe the crossover between the solitonic onset of transport in arrays shorter than the disorder correlation length to onset of transport by de-pinning for longer arrays