Coherent suppression of electromagnetic dissipation due to superconducting quasiparticles

The long-predicted suppression of quasiparticle dissipation in a Josephson junction when the phase difference across the junction is [pi] is inferred from a sharp maximum in the energy relaxation time of a superconducting artificial atom. Quasiparticle dissipation in a Josephson junction Josephson junctions, which consist of two superconductors connected by a weak link, have a central role in quantum electronic applications, such as in sensitive magnetic field detectors, high-speed processing and quantum information networks. However, a fundamental prediction concerning the Josephson effect has not yet been confirmed. It is known that the current flowing through a Josephson junction is made up from superconducting Cooper pairs as well as excitations called quasiparticles, which contribute in a few different ways. One contribution causes dissipation but can in theory be suppressed by tuning the phase difference between the superconductors. This has been achieved experimentally. Ioan Pop et al. have made a qubit comprising a Josephson junction. The energy relaxation time of this qubit increases by almost two orders of magnitude owing to the suppression of quasiparticle dissipation. This finding confirms the existence of a fundamental quantum phenomenon predicted over 50 years ago. Owing to the low-loss propagation of electromagnetic signals in superconductors, Josephson junctions constitute ideal building blocks for quantum memories, amplifiers, detectors and high-speed processing units, operating over a wide band of microwave frequencies. Nevertheless, although transport in superconducting wires is perfectly lossless for direct current, transport of radio-frequency signals can be dissipative in the presence of quasiparticle excitations above the superconducting gap.sup.1. Moreover, the exact mechanism of this dissipation in Josephson junctions has never been fully resolved experimentally. In particular, Josephson's key theoretical prediction that quasiparticle dissipation should vanish in transport through a junction when the phase difference across the junction is [pi] (ref. 2) has never been observed.sup.3. This subtle effect can be understood as resulting from the destructive interference of two separate dissipative channels involving electron-like and hole-like quasiparticles. Here we report the experimental observation of this quantum coherent suppression of quasiparticle dissipation across a Josephson junction. As the average phase bias across the junction is swept through [pi], we measure an increase of more than one order of magnitude in the energy relaxation time of a superconducting artificial atom. This striking suppression of dissipation, despite the presence of lossy quasiparticle excitations above the superconducting gap, provides a powerful tool for minimizing decoherence in quantum electronic systems and could be directly exploited in quantum information experiments with superconducting quantum bits.
Author(s): Ioan M. Pop [sup.1] , Kurtis Geerlings [sup.1] , Gianluigi Catelani [sup.1] [sup.2] , Robert J. Schoelkopf [sup.1] , Leonid I. Glazman [sup.1] , Michel H. Devoret [sup.1] Author [...]