Potter, Jamie Alexander;
(2021)
Experimental study of the quantum phase-slip effect in NbN nanowires.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Coherent quantum phase-slip (QPS) in a superconducting nanowire is the dual phenomenon to the well-known Josephson effect. Josephson junctions form the basis of superconducting electronic circuits with a wide range of applications, and each of those circuits has a corresponding dual quantum phase-slip device with a dual purpose. Examples that draw particular attention are a new quantum standard of electric current, and a quantum phase-slip qubit. The aim of this project is to develop methods of design, fabrication, and measurement of quantum phase-slip nanowires, and to demonstrate the potential of these devices for technological application. In our experiments we incorporate NbN nanowires into a superconducting loop and bias the loop with a magnetic flux. The state of the nanowire-embedded loop is then read out by coupling to a high quality coplanar waveguide resonator. In this thesis we present the results of two such experiments. First, we fabricated NbN nanowires using a neon focused-ion-beam, and measured their properties at T=300 mK. Periodic tuning of the resonant frequency of the readout resonator revealed that magnetic flux is transferred to the interior of the loop with flux-quantum-periodicity. Our measurements confirm that the flux-quantum transfer is mediated by incoherent quantum phase-slips occurring in the nanowires, and that these incoherent QPS can be fully controlled with an external bias. In the second experiment, nanowire-embedded NbN loops were fabricated by electron-beam lithography and cooled to T=10 mK. The resonant frequency tuning exhibited avoided crossings, which is evidence of coherent coupling between the resonator and a coherent quantum two-level system. We numerically fit these avoided crossings to the Jaynes-Cummings model to extract the properties of the two-level system, and find a good fit with the design parameters of our nanowire qubit. Finally we discuss whether the observation of coherent dynamics is evidence of coherent QPS in the EBL-fabricated nanowire.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Experimental study of the quantum phase-slip effect in NbN nanowires |
| Event: | UCL (University College London) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2021. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Electronic and Electrical Eng |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10132958 |
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