Incoming links: Josephson effect
To Brian Josephson for the prediction of the Josephson effect.
Starting in the 2019 redefinition of the SI base units, the elementary charge is assigned a fixed number, and the Ampere is based on it and on the second, which is beautiful.
This choice is not because we attempt to count individual electrons going through a wire, as it would be far too many to count!
Rather, it is because because there are two crazy quantum mechanical effects that give us macroscopic measures that are directly related to the electron charge. www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/ampere/ampere-quantum-metrology-triangle by the NIST explains that the two effects are:
- quantum Hall effect, which has discrete resistances of type:for integer values of .
- Josephson effect, used in the Josephson voltage standard. With the Inverse AC Josephson effect we are able to produce:per Josephson junction. This is about 2 microvolt / GHz, where GHz is a practical input frequency. Video "The evolution of voltage metrology to the latest generation of JVSs by Alain Rüfenacht" mentions that a typical operating frequency is 20 GHz.Therefore to attain a good 10 V, we need something in the order of a million Josephson junctions.But this is possible to implement in a single chip with existing micro fabrication techniques, and is exactly what the Josephson voltage standard does!
Those effect work because they also involve dividing by the Planck constant, the fundamental constant of quantum mechanics, which is also tiny, and thus brings values into a much more measurable order of size.
Superconductivity is one of the key advances of 21st century technology:
- produce powerful magnetic fields with superconducting magnets
- the Josephson effect, applications listed at: Section "Applications of Josephson Junctions"
A device that exhibits the Josephson effect.
The Kibble balance is so precise and reproducible that it was responsible for the 2019 redefinition of the Kilogram.
It relies rely on not one, but three macroscopic quantum mechanical effects:How cool is that! As usual, the advantage of those effects is that they are discrete, and have very fixed values that don't depend either:One downside of using some quantum mechanical effects is that you have to cool everything down to 5K. But that's OK, we've got liquid helium!
- atomic spectra: basis for the caesium standard which produces precise time and frequency
- Josephson effect: basis for the Josephson voltage standard, which produces precise voltage
- quantum Hall effect: basis for the quantum Hall effect, which produces precise electrical resistance
- on the physical dimensions of any apparatus (otherwise fabrication precision would be an issue)
- small variations of temperature, magnetic field and so on
The operating principle is something along:Then, based on all this, you can determine how much the object weights.
- generate a precise frequency with a signal generator, ultimately calibrated by the Caesium standard
- use that precise frequency to generate a precise voltage with a Josephson voltage standard
- convert that precise voltage into a precise electric current by using the quantum Hall effect, which produces a very precise electrical resistance
- use that precise current to generate a precise force on the object your weighing, pushing it against gravity
- then you precisely measure both:
- local gravity with a gravimeter
- the displacement acceleration of the object with a laser setup
How We're Redefining the kg by Veritasium
. Source. The Kibble Balance, realizing the Kilogram from fundamental constants of nature by Richard Green
. Source. Presented in 2022 for a CENAM seminar, the Mexican metrology institute. The speaker is from the Canadian metrology institute- youtu.be/ZfNygYuuVAE?t=854: they don't actually use the Quantum Hall effect device during operation, they only use it to calibrate other non-quantum resistors
The Watt balance and redefining the kilogram by National Physical Laboratory
. Source. Nothing much, but fun to hear Kibble talking about his balance in beautiful English before he passed.TODO is there any relationship between this and the Josephson effect?
Experimental observation published as Experimental Evidence for Quantized Flux in Superconducting Cylinders.
This appears to happen to any superconducting loop, because the superconducting wave function has to be continuous.
Video "Superconducting Qubit by NTT SCL (2015)" suggests that anything in between gets cancelled out by a superposition of current in both directions.
The inaugural that predicted the Josephson effect.
Published on Physics Letters, then a new journal, before they split into Physics Letters A and Physics Letters B. True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen mentions that this choice was made rather than the more prestigious Physical Review Letters because they were not yet so confident about the results.
Probable observation of the Josephson superconducting tunneling effect Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
Paper by Philip W. Anderson and John M. Rowell that first (?) experimentally observed the Josephson effect.
Paywalled by the American Physical Society as of 2023 at: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.10.230
TODO understand the graphs in detail.
They used tin-oxide-lead tunnel at 1.5 K. TODO oxide of what? Why two different metals? They say that both films are 200 nm thick, so maybe it is:
-----+------+------+-----
... Sn | SnO2 | PbO2 | Pb ...
-----+------+------------
100nm 100nmA reconstruction of their circuit in Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation TODO:
DC---R_10---X---GThere are not details of the physical construction of course. Reproducibility lol.
Based on the Josephson effect. Yet another application of that phenomenal phenomena!
Philosophically, superconducting qubits are good because superconductivity is macroscopic.
It is fun to see that the representation of information in the QC basically uses an LC circuit, which is a very classical resonator circuit.
As mentioned at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_quantum_computing#Qubit_archetypes there are actually a few different types of superconducting qubits:
- flux
- charge
- phase
and hybridizations of those such as:
Input:
- microwave radiation to excite circuit, or do nothing and wait for it to fall to 0 spontaneously
- interaction: TODO
- readout: TODO
Quantum Transport, Lecture 16: Superconducting qubits by Sergey Frolov (2013)
Source. youtu.be/Kz6mhh1A_mU?t=1171 describes several possible realizations: charge, flux, charge/flux and phase.Building a quantum computer with superconducting qubits by Daniel Sank (2019)
Source. Daniel wears a "Google SB" t-shirt, which either means shabi in Chinese, or Santa Barbara. Google Quantum AI is based in Santa Barbara, with links to UCSB.- youtu.be/uPw9nkJAwDY?t=293 superconducting qubits are good because superconductivity is macroscopic. Explains how in non superconducting metal, each electron moves separatelly, and can hit atoms and leak vibration/photos, which lead to observation and quantum error
- youtu.be/uPw9nkJAwDY?t=429 made of aluminium
- youtu.be/uPw9nkJAwDY?t=432 shows the circuit diagram, and notes that the thing is basically a LC circuitusing the newly created just now Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation. Note that the block on the right is a SQUID device.
+-----+ | | | +-+-+ | | | C X X | | | | +-+-+ | | +-----+ - youtu.be/uPw9nkJAwDY?t=471 mentions that the frequency between states 0 and 1 is chosen to be 6 GHz:This explains why we need to go to much lower temperatures than simply the superconducting temperature of aluminum!
- higher frequencies would be harder/more expensive to generate
- lower frequencies would mean less energy according to the Planck relation. And less energy means that thermal energy would matter more, and introduce more noise.6 GHz is aboutFrom the definition of the Boltzmann constant, the temperature which has that average energe of particles is of the order of:
A Brief History of Superconducting quantum computing by Steven Girvin (2021)
Source. - youtu.be/xjlGL4Mvq7A?t=138 superconducting quantum computer need non-linear components (too brief if you don't know what he means in advance)
- youtu.be/xjlGL4Mvq7A?t=169 quantum computing is hard because we want long coherence but fast control
Superconducting Qubits I Part 1 by Zlatko Minev (2020)
Source. The Q&A in the middle of talking is a bit annoying.
- youtu.be/eZJjQGu85Ps?t=2443 the first actually useful part, shows a transmon diagram with some useful formulas on it
As mentioned in True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen page 224, the idea of symmetry breaking was a major motivation in Josephson's study of the Josephson effect.
Groups concepts by hyponymy and hypernymy and meronymy and holonymy. That actually makes a lot of sense! TODO: is there a clear separation between hyponymy and meronymy?
Browse: wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn Appears dead as of 2025 lol.
The online version of WordNet has been deprecated and is no longer available.
Does not contain intermediat scientific terms, only very common ones, e.g. no mention, of "Josephson effect", "photoelectric effect"