Thouless pumping in Josephson junction arrays

TL;DR

This paper proposes methods to realize Thouless quantum pumping in Josephson junction arrays, demonstrating their potential as versatile platforms for quantum simulation and exploring the dynamics of driven interacting superconducting systems.

Contribution

It introduces protocols for implementing Thouless pumping in Josephson junction arrays and analyzes their robustness and long-term behavior through numerical simulations.

Findings

Thouless pumping can be robustly realized in Josephson junction arrays.

The systems exhibit stable long-time quantized charge transport.

Boundary effects have limited impact on the pumping robustness.

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.