AC Josephson effect without superconductivity

Abstract

Superconductivity derives its most salient features from the coherence of its macroscopic wave function. The associated physical phenomena have now moved from exotic subjects to fundamental building blocks for quantum circuits such as qubits or single photonic modes. Here, we theoretically find that the AC Josephson effect---which transforms a DC voltage $V_b$ into an oscillating signal $cos(2e{V}_{b}t/\hslash )$---has a mesoscopic counterpart in normal conductors. We show that on applying a DC voltage $V_b$ to an electronic interferometer, there exists a universal transient regime where the current oscillates at frequency $e{V}_b/h$. This effect is not limited by a superconducting gap and could, in principle, be used to produce tunable AC signals in the elusive $0.1-10$ THz "terahertz gap".

4 pages, 2 figures, 5 equations

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• Towards Realistic Time-Resolved Simulations of Quantum Devices
• Time-dependent simulation and analytical modelling of electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometry with edge-states wave packets
• On-chip coherent frequency-domain THz spectroscopy for electrical transport
• Simulating time-dependent thermoelectric transport in quantum systems
• Toward flying qubit spectroscopy
• Dynamics and Hall-edge-state mixing of localized electrons in a two-channel Mach-Zehnder interferometer
• Probing electron-hole weights of an Andreev bound state by transient currents
• Theory of generalized Josephson effects
• Nonequilibrium Fractional Josephson Effect
• Propagation of ultrashort voltage pulses through a small quantum dot