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Dissipation and noise in strongly driven Josephson junctions
by Vasilii Vadimov, Yoshiki Sunada, Mikko Möttönen
Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Vasilii Vadimov |
| Submission information | |
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| Preprint Link: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06877v3 (pdf) |
| Code repository: | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15301744 |
| Date accepted: | Aug. 27, 2025 |
| Date submitted: | Aug. 21, 2025, 8:38 a.m. |
| Submitted by: | Vasilii Vadimov |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics Core |
| Ontological classification | |
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| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
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| Approach: | Theoretical |
Abstract
In circuit quantum electrodynamical systems, the quasiparticle-related losses in Josephson junctions are suppressed due to the gap in the superconducting density of states which is much higher than the typical energy of a microwave photon. In this work, we show that a strong drive even at a frequency lower than twice the superconductor gap parameter can activate dissipation in the junctions due to photon-assisted breaking of the Cooper pairs. Both the decay rate and noise strength associated with the losses are sensitive to the dc phase bias of the junction and can be tuned in a broad range by the amplitude and the frequency of the external driving field, making the suggested mechanism potentially attractive for designing tunable dissipative elements. We also predict pronounced memory effects in the driven Josephson junctions, which are appealing for both theoretical and experimental studies of non-Markovian physics in superconducting quantum circuits. We illustrate our theoretical findings by studying the spectral properties and the steady-state population of a low-impedance resonator coupled to the driven Josephson junction: we show the emergence of non-Lorentzian spectral lines and broad tunability of effective temperature of the steady state.
Author comments upon resubmission
We are thankful for processing our manuscript and providing us with the reports by two Referees. We are also grateful to the Referees for the assessing of our work and their useful comments. We are pleased that Referee #1 highly evaluated our work and recommended it for publication after minor changes. Since Referee #2 did not find our results sufficiently novel but otherwise gave a positive feedback, we have decided to resubmit the manuscript to SciPost Physics Core. We hope, that after addressing issues raised by Referee #1 the manuscript is suitable for publication in this journal.
On behalf of the authors,
Vasilii Vadimov.
List of changes
- We have added a brief discussion about possibly non-Fermi distribution of quasiparticles in Sec. 2.1 after Eq. (6).
- We have replaced expressions for Keldysh components of polarization operator in Eq. (5) with a more general ones which are valid for non-equilibrium distribution of quasiparticles. The previous version of this expression justified by FDT is moved in Eq. (7).
- We have added a short paragraph about validity range of perturbative approach which neglects possible dynamics of quasiparticle distribution.
- We have added comments which explain our choice of infinitesimal coupling between the LC-circuit and the probe in the beginning of Sec. 4.
- We have updated caption to Fig. 7 and have written which resonances are responsible for the sharp transitions there.
- We have updated Sec. 4.2 with an explanation of which multiphoton Cooper-pair breaking processes are dominant in the regions shown in Fig. 7.
Published as SciPost Phys. Core 8, 065 (2025)