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Thouless pumping in Josephson junction arrays
by Stavros Athanasiou, Ida E. Nielsen, Matteo M. Wauters, Michele Burrello
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Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Michele Burrello · Ida Nielsen · Matteo Wauters |
| Submission information | |
|---|---|
| Preprint Link: | scipost_202312_00027v1 (pdf) |
| Code repository: | https://github.com/mwauters92/QuantumPumping |
| Data repository: | https://github.com/mwauters92/QuantumPumping |
| Date submitted: | 2023-12-15 11:24 |
| Submitted by: | Burrello, Michele |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics |
| Ontological classification | |
|---|---|
| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
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| Approaches: | Theoretical, Computational |
Abstract
Recent advancements in fabrication techniques have enabled unprecedented clean interfaces and gate tunability in semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures. Inspired by these developments, we propose protocols to realize Thouless quantum pumping in electrically tunable Josephson junction arrays. We analyze, in particular, the implementation of the Rice-Mele and the Harper-Hofstadter pumping schemes, whose realization would validate these systems as flexible platforms for quantum simulations. We investigate numerically the long-time behavior of chains of controllable superconducting islands in the Coulomb-blockaded regime. Our findings provide new insights into the dynamics of periodically driven interacting systems and highlight the robustness of Thouless pumping with respect to boundary effects typical of superconducting circuits.
Author comments upon resubmission
as requested, we updated our manuscript and answered in detail to all the points addressed by the referees. In the new version of the work, we considerably extended Sections 3.3, 4, 5 and the conclusions. Moreover, new data are presented in Appendix A.
The specific answers to the referees have been added as comments to their reports.
The new comments and analyses delve deeper into the role of interactions and the experimental feasibility of our proposal. With these additions, we believe that the manuscript is now ready for publication in SciPost Physics.
Sincerely yours,
Michele Burrello (on behalf of the authors)
List of changes
Sections 3.3, 4, 5 and the conclusions have been extended.
Appendix A, Figures 13 and 14 have been added.
Sections 1 and 2 have been slightly extended.
The bibliography has been extended.
Current status:
Reports on this Submission
Anonymous Report 3 on 2024-2-28 (Invited Report)
- Cite as: Anonymous, Report on arXiv:scipost_202312_00027v1, delivered 2024-02-28, doi: 10.21468/SciPost.Report.8633
Strengths
1 - Maps a complicated Josephson-junction chain to simple single-particle models known to perform quantized topological pumping.
2 - Concretely suggests a way to experimentally implement it, going deep into details.
Weaknesses
The role of resistive noise is neglected, maybe for a good reason, but it would be better to explain.
Report
From a theoretical point of view the manuscript is very good, providing a simple and clean mapping to single-particle quantized topological pumping models of a complicated Josephson-junction array. Pumping is studied in a simple and elegant way and a detailed suggestion for experimental realization is provided.
In the section below I will suggest some changes, related mainly to the fact that noise is neglected. Maybe the regime that the authors considers allows this neglection, but at least some short comment would be in order.
Please consider that I am a theorist. In order to be sure that the manuscript can ``open a new pathway in an existing or a new research direction'' it would be important to listen to the opinion of an experimentalist. Indeed a considerale part of the value of the manuscript lies in the detailed suggestion of an experimental realization, and only an experimentalist can judge on this part.
So, in case you have not yet done it, I encourage you to ask a Referee with experimental expertise for a review. In case she or he provides a good opinion, please go on with publication.
Requested changes
1- As I mentioned above, I ask the authors to explain why resistive noise is negligible, and what happens if it is considered (maybe quantization is anhanced because the model is lead towards its topological ground state?)
2- If the authors wish, I encourage them to add an appendix about topological pumping and Chern number, in order to allow also nonexperts to appreciate the quality of what they do.
Anonymous Report 2 on 2024-2-13 (Invited Report)
- Cite as: Anonymous, Report on arXiv:scipost_202312_00027v1, delivered 2024-02-13, doi: 10.21468/SciPost.Report.8556
Report
The authors have addressed my comments in details. However, I still believe that this paper does not hit the standard of Scipost Physics and is better suited to its Core version.
Sec. 2 indeed contains the modelling part but this is rather standard in my opinion. Most of the paper deals with short and non-interacting but time dependent systems, only Sec. 3.3 and Sec. 4 focus on interaction effects, occupying only roughly 4 pages. A newly added Appendix also discusses some interaction effects.
Among the 4 basic acceptance criteria of Scipost Physics, this paper is the closest to open a new pathway in an existing or a new research direction, but does not meet it. Therefore I can only recommend it for publication Scipost Physics Core.
Anonymous Report 1 on 2023-12-19 (Invited Report)
- Cite as: Anonymous, Report on arXiv:scipost_202312_00027v1, delivered 2023-12-19, doi: 10.21468/SciPost.Report.8307
Strengths
- See previous report
Weaknesses
- None, comments from previous report were adequately addressed.
Report
The authors present a revised and extended version that adequately addresses comments and questions raised in the last reports. My recommendation is to publish the manuscript in SciPost Physics (see two optional comments below).
Requested changes
1- In the context of dissipation and Thouless pumping, the authors might want to take note of Fedorova et al. Nature Comm 11, Article number: 3758 (2020)
2- Regarding the discussion (comparison of JJ setup versus cold gases) on page 20: the number of cycles depends much on parameters. The best case was achieved in Zhu et al, arXiv:2301.03583, where the breakdown (and reversal) is due to the trapping potential and not due to heating.
Author: Michele Burrello on 2024-03-05 [id 4338]
(in reply to Report 3 on 2024-02-28)We thank the referee for the very positive comments and the useful feedback, which we carefully considered in the resubmission of the manuscript.
As suggested, in the updated version of the manuscript we extended section 5 to include a discussion on the effect of the noise of the voltage gates. In particular, we can map this dissipative effect into effective dissipation rates, and we discuss how these rates depend on the physical parameter of the setup we propose. For low temperatures, we estimate thermal noise to have only a weak effect on the dynamics of the system. The effect of noise is qualitatively comparable to the non-adiabatic corrections we studied, such that we do not expect it to spoil the topological quantization of the pumped charge.
As indicated by the referee, we also added a new appendix with a brief overview on how to link the pumped charge to a suitably defined Chern number.