Trapped electron coupled to superconducting devices

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel hybrid system coupling a trapped electron in a cryogenic Penning trap to superconducting devices, enabling new quantum experiments and investigations of superconductor properties.

Contribution

It introduces a method to couple a single trapped electron with superconducting structures for quantum control and measurement, combining electron trapping with superconducting circuit technology.

Findings

Proposal of electron-superconductor coupling setup

Potential to study vortex structures and decoherence

Enabling circuit QED-like experiments with electrons

Abstract

We propose to couple a trapped single electron to superconducting structures located at a variable distance from the electron. The electron is captured in a cryogenic Penning trap using electric fields and a static magnetic field in the Tesla range. Measurements on the electron will allow investigating the properties of the superconductor such as vortex structure, damping and decoherence. We propose to couple a superconducting microwave resonator to the electron in order to realize a circuit QED-like experiment, as well as to couple superconducting Josephson junctions or superconducting quantum interferometers (SQUIDs) to the electron. The electron may also be coupled to a vortex which is situated in a double well potential, realized by nearby pinning centers in the superconductor, acting as a quantum mechanical two level system that can be controlled by a transport current tilting the double well potential. When the vortex is trapped in the interferometer arms of a SQUID, this would allow its detection both by the SQUID and by the electron.