How many quasiparticles can be in a superconductor?

Abstract

Experimentally and mysteriously, the concentration of quasiparticles in a gapped superconductor at low temperatures always by far exceeds its equilibrium value. We study the dynamics of localized quasiparticles in superconductors with a spatially fluctuating gap edge. The competition between phonon-induced quasiparticle recombination and generation by a weak non-equilibrium agent results in an upper bound for the concentration that explains the mystery.

8 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (11)

• Majorana qubit decoherence by quasiparticle poisoning
• Measurement and Control of Quasiparticle Dynamics in a Superconducting Qubit
• Parity lifetime of bound states in a proximitized semiconductor nanowire
• Number fluctuations of sparse quasiparticles in a superconductor
• Quasiparticle relaxation of superconducting qubits in the presence of flux
• Non-Poissonian Quantum Jumps of a Fluxonium Qubit due to Quasiparticle Excitations
• Trapping a single vortex and reducing quasiparticles in a superconducting resonator
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• 1 minute parity lifetime of a NbTiN Cooper-pair transistor
• Excitation of superconducting qubits from hot non-equilibrium quasiparticles
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• Quasiparticle dynamics in granular aluminum close to the superconductor to insulator transition
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• Direct Dispersive Monitoring of Charge Parity in Offset-Charge-Sensitive Transmons
• Phonon traps reduce the quasiparticle density in superconducting circuits
• Prethermal Strong Zero Modes and Topological Qubits
• Quasiparticle poisoning of Majorana qubits
• TLS Dynamics in a Superconducting Qubit Due to Background Ionizing Radiation
• Coexistence of nonequilibrium density and equilibrium energy distribution of quasiparticles in a superconducting qubit
• Quench dynamics in superconducting nanojunctions: metastability and dynamical Yang-Lee zeros
• Using materials for quasiparticle engineering
• A Stress Induced Source of Phonon Bursts and Quasiparticle Poisoning
• Geometric superinductance qubits: Controlling phase delocalization across a single Josephson junction
• Dark Matter Induced Power in Quantum Devices
• Measuring effective temperatures of qubits using correlations
• Dissipative Quantum Feedback in Measurements Using a Parametrically Coupled Microcavity
• Design of a Cooper pair box electrometer for application to solid-state and astroparticle physics
• Dissipation in a superconducting artificial atom due to a single non-equilibrium quasiparticle
• Nonequilibrium Andreev bound states population in short superconducting junctions coupled to a resonator
• Quasiparticle poisoning in trivial and topological Josephson junctions
• A particle conserving approach to AC-DC driven interacting quantum dots with superconducting leads
• Recovery of a SINIS turnstile accuracy in a strongly non-equilibrium regime
• Direct visualization of quasiparticle concentration around superconducting vortices
• Dynamical spin polarization of excess quasi-particles in superconductors
• Excess quasiparticles and their dynamics in the presence of subgap states
• Systematic Schrieffer-Wolff-transformation approach to Josephson junctions: quasiparticle effects and Josephson harmonics
• Recombination of localized quasiparticles in disordered superconductors
• Localized quasiparticles in a fluxonium with quasi-two-dimensional amorphous kinetic inductors
• Quasiparticle-induced decoherence of a driven superconducting qubit
• Strong Reduction of Quasiparticle Fluctuations in a Superconductor due to Decoupling of the Quasiparticle Number and Lifetime