Quantum breathers in capacitively coupled Josephson junctions: Correlations, number conservation, and entanglement

TL;DR

This paper investigates quantum breather states in coupled Josephson junctions, revealing their correlations, tunneling behavior, and entanglement properties, with implications for experimental observation in quantum information systems.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of quantum breather states in Josephson junctions, highlighting their correlations, tunneling dynamics, and entanglement, which are novel insights into quantum localized excitations.

Findings

Quantum breather states exhibit strong site correlations.

They perform slow coherent tunneling between junctions.

These states are minimally entangled among eigenstates in their energy range.

Abstract

We consider the classical and quantum dynamics of excitations in a system of two capacitively coupled Josephson junctions. In the classical case the equations of motion admit discrete breather solutions, which are time periodic and localized predominantly on one of the junctions. In the quantum case breather states are found in the central part of the energy spectrum of the confined nonescaping states of the system. We perform a systematic analysis of their tunneling frequency, site correlations, fluctuations of the number of quanta, and entanglement. Quantum breather states show strong site correlation of quanta and are characterized by a strong excitation of quanta on one junction which perform slow coherent tunneling motion from one junction to the other. They suppress fluctuations of the total number of excited quanta. Quantum breather states are the least entangled states among the group of eigenstates in the same range of the energy spectrum. We describe how quantum breather excitations could be experimentally observed by employing the already developed techniques for quantum information processing using Josephson junctions.