Superconducting devices articles from across Nature Portfolio

The authors observe an exceptional point and the corresponding phase transition in a superconducting non-Hermitian circuit. They find non-reciprocal microwave transmission can be achieved within the broken symmetry phase in the few-photon regime.

Paul Szypryt and co-authors present a kinetic inductance current sensor which uses nonlinear kinetic inductance in a superconducting resonator for current measurement. Their device demonstrates a readout noise below the level of a coupled transition-edge sensor.

This work reports on the observation of a large Josephson diode effect in a type-II Dirac semimetal 1T-PtTe₂. The magnitude of the Josephson diode effect is found to be related to an asymmetry of the critical supercurrent which is modeled as a phase shift between the first and second harmonic terms of the current-phase relationship and can be tuned by an external magnetic field.

It was recently shown that a voltage could be used to control a supercurrent in superconducting nanostructures, much like a transistor, however, the exact origin of this effect has been debated. Here Elalaily et al. show via noise measurements that the suppression of the supercurrent in the superconducting device  arises due to excitation emission by inelastic tunneling of the electrons through the trap states created by stressing the oxide layer between the gate and the NW under a high electric field.

Further progress in quantum technologies will require the hybridization of superconducting and photonic platforms. Transparent superconducting oxides would be an ideal solution to avoid substantial losses caused by photon absorption of the superconducting components. Here we present design principles for such materials and discuss the foreseeable prospects of transparent superconductor electronics.

Electrons trapped above the surface of solid neon can be used to create qubits using spatial states with different charge distributions. These charge qubits combine direct electric field control with long coherence times.

Chains of coupled superconducting islands known as Josephson junction arrays were predicted to be insulating at high impedance, but superconducting behaviour has been observed. A study of the arrays’ transport suggests thermal effects are responsible.

High-T_c superconducting nanowire detectors can detect single photons of telecom wavelengths at a temperature of 25 K and may enable applications in quantum sensing and quantum information processing.

‘Squeezing’ of light can be used to alter the distribution of quantum noise to benefit quantum sensing and other applications. An improved design for a microwave photon squeezer provides high performance over a large bandwidth.

The magnetic flux in a superconducting loop can only change by discrete jumps called phase slips. The energy dissipated by an individual phase slip has now been detected thanks to advances in precision temperature measurements.