Optimized Cooper pair pumps

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that non-adiabatic Cooper pair pumps, optimized via quantum control theory, can achieve highly accurate charge quantization with errors reduced by five orders of magnitude compared to traditional adiabatic methods, even considering realistic noise and imperfections.

Contribution

The authors develop a quantum optimal control approach to shape gate voltage pulses, significantly improving the accuracy of Cooper pair pumps in the non-adiabatic regime.

Findings

Error reduced to ~10^-6 e with optimal pulses

Non-adiabatic pumping surpasses adiabatic accuracy by five orders of magnitude

Robustness against charge noise and pulse imperfections demonstrated

Abstract

In adiabatic Cooper pair pumps, operated by means of gate voltage modulation only, the quantization of the pumped charge during a cycle is limited due to the quantum coherence of the macroscopic superconducting wave function. In this work we show that it is possible to obtain very accurate pumps in the non-adiabatic regime by a suitable choice of the shape of the gate voltage pulses. We determine the shape of these pulses by applying quantum optimal control theory to this problem. In the optimal case the error, with respect to the quantized value, can be as small as of the order of (10E-6)e: the error is reduced by up to five orders of magnitude with respect to the adiabatic pumping. In order to test the experimental feasibility of this approach we consider the effect of charge noise and the deformations of the optimal pulse shapes on the accuracy of the pump. Charge noise is assumed to be induced by random background charges in the substrate, responsible for the observed 1/f noise. Inaccuracies in the pulse shaping are described by assuming a finite bandwidth for the pulse generator. In realistic cases the error increases at most of one order of magnitude as compared to the optimal case. Our results are promising for the realization of accurate and fast superconducting pumps.