The ability to perform more and more accurate and precise measurements is driving the development of new and technologies and the quality of life. At the core of our measurement capabilities lies the SI, systeme international, which sets out the standards and definitions for the fundamental physical units that underpins all measurements. In 2019 something remarkable took place, then the SI was redefined in terms of fundamental constants of nature, eliminating the need for the last remaining artefacts to realise the fundamental SI units. This means that in practice, units no longer need to be realised by a specific method or device, as long as the underlying fundamental physical relation based on constants of natures is realised. In particular, this opens up new possibilities for realising more accurate measurements of electrical currents through novel physics, which one of the base SI units that today is most challenging to disseminate with high accuracy.
In the new SI the unit of electrical current, the ampere, can be disseminated by any device that realised the simple relation I [A] = e*f, where f is a frequency defined through atomic clocks and e is the fixed charge of the electron. The easiest way to think of this definition is that the current is defined in terms of the number of electrons that pass through a device per unit of time, and if we somehow could count the electrons, we would know the current. The challenge is that the fundamental electron charge is a very small number, e=1.602176634*10-19 which means that in order to produce any appreciable currents we would need to be able to count individual electrons at incredibly high rates, several billion counts per second, without a single error. The ampere is dramatically more difficult to realize than the volt, which was one of the first metrological standards that were realised through a quantum mechanical effect – the so-called Josephson effect – and based entirely on fundamental constants of nature. When a Josephson junction (a very thin piece of insulator sandwiched between two superconducting electrodes) is driven by microwave radiation the charge tunnelling across this junction becomes phase locked to the external drive, producing constant voltages at integer multiples of (h/2e) = 2.067834 mV/GHz, V=(h/2e)f. Here h is the Planck constant. This effect is extremely robust, and its universality has been shown down to a record-breaking accuracy of 10-19.
Fundamental theory of quantum mechanics stipulates a duality in superconducting circuits, which implies that, loosely speaking, what can be realised with Josephson junctions and the volt, should have a dual counterpart that yields the ampere. This fundamental process is called Coherent Quantum Phase Slip (CQPS), which is analogous to the tunnelling of a magnetic flux across a superconducting nanowire (SNW), as opposed to the tunnelling of a charge across the insulating barrier of a Josephson junction. Realising devices based on CQPS has been an open challenge, as the requirements put stringent demands on materials and nanofabrication of superconducting devices. The overall objective of the Quantum e-leaps project is to develop a robust and easy-to-use universal quantum standard of all electrical quantities on a single chip by utilizing the duality of superconducting physics, in particular utilizing CQPS. We take the advantage of a European level effort to utilize, develop and combine the latest advances in nanofabrication, for example 2D superconductors, to yield SNW devices with unprecedented tuneability.
Conclusions of the action:
1. Observation of dual Shapiro steps based on CQPS is feasible and has been demonstrated.
2. The effect is universal in different materials, but some offer advantages over others. Many more detailed technology studies are required to move forward and optimise performance.
3. Feasibility of integrated electrical metrology systems looks very promising
4. The underlying technology developed has a wide range of potential applications in quantum technologies and beyond.
