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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_00027v2 (pdf) |
| Code repository: | https://github.com/mwauters92/QuantumPumping |
| Data repository: | https://github.com/mwauters92/QuantumPumping |
| Date accepted: | 2024-03-11 |
| Date submitted: | 2024-03-05 16:11 |
| 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
we are happy of resubmitting an extended version of our manuscript "Thouless pumping in Josephson junction arrays" for consideration in SciPost physics.
In the previous step of the review process, the first referee recommended publication in SciPost physics and found that we adequately addressed the comments and questions raised in the previous reports.
The second referee claims that our modelling is rather standard, despite the fact that we are presenting for the first time a pumping scheme based on electrically tunable Josephson junctions and we discuss for the first time the modelling of these hybrid superconductor-semiconductor devices in a driven out-of-equilibrium scenario. He/she writes that our analysis of interaction effects occupies "only roughly 4 pages" plus an appendix, and disregards the fact that our work provides detailed numerical simulations that combine together the following non-trivial elements: nearest-neighbor interactions, the coupling of external superconducting leads (which does not conserve the number of particles) and the analysis of the validity of the hardcore boson approximation. He/She recommends publication in Scipost Physics Core without any specific criticism on our results or the adopted techniques.
The third referee considers our manuscript "very good", writes that we provide "a simple and clean mapping to single-particle quantized topological pumping models of a complicated Josephson-junction array" and that we studied pumping "in a simple and elegant way". He/She suggests some further extensions, that we implemented in the revised version.
In particular, we list below the new parts included in the work. With these further extensions we find that all the points raised by the referees have been thoroughly addressed and we are convinced that our work fully meets the criteria of clarity and innovation required by SciPost physics.
List of changes
1) We added comments and references on dissipation effects in Sec. 5, based on the advice of the first referee.
2) We extended section 5 to estimate and discuss the effects of noise in the voltage gates, as suggested by the third referee. Sec. 5 has been split into two subsections.
3) We added a new appendix to present the derivation of quantized Thouless pumping analogously to the TKNN formula.
Published as SciPost Phys. 16, 083 (2024)