# Levitons in superconducting point contacts

## TL;DR

This paper analyzes the transport properties of superconducting quantum point contacts under periodic drives, revealing how different drives affect noise and supercurrent, especially near the gap frequency.

## Contribution

It provides general expressions for current and noise in driven superconducting contacts and demonstrates how Lorentzian pulses minimize excess noise, linking drive shape to quantum transport.

## Key findings

- Quantized Lorentzian pulses minimize excess noise.
- Excess noise relates to electron-hole energy distribution overlap.
- Adiabatic limit reproduces Shapiro-spike physics.

## Abstract

We investigate the transport properties of a superconducting quantum point contact in the presence of an arbitrary periodic drive. In particular, we calculate the dc current and noise in the tunnel limit, obtaining general expressions in terms of photoassisted probabilities. Interesting features can be observed when the frequency is comparable to the gap. Here, we show that quantized Lorentzian pulses minimize the excess noise, further strengthening the hierarchy among different periodic drives observed in the electron quantum optics domain. In this regime, the excess noise is directly connected to the overlap between electron and hole energy distributions driven out of equilibrium by the applied voltage. In the adiabatic limit, where the frequency of the drive is very small compared to the superconducting gap, we recover the conventional Shapiro-spikes physics in the supercurrent.