Frequency to power conversion by an electron turnstile

Abstract

Direct frequency to power conversion (FPC), to be presented here, links both quantities through a known energy, like single-electron transport relates an operation frequency $f$ to the emitted current $I$ through the electron charge $e$ as $I=ef$. FPC is a natural candidate for a power standard resorting to the most basic definition of the watt -- energy, which is traceable to Planck's constant $h$, emitted per unit of time. This time is in turn traceable to the unperturbed ground state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom $\Delta {\nu }_{\mathrm{Cs}}$; hence, FPC comprises a simple and elegant way to realize the watt. In this spirit, single-photon emission and detection at known rates have been proposed and experimented as radiometric standard. However, nowadays power standards are only traceable to electrical units, i.e., volt and ohm. In this letter, we demonstrate the feasibility of an alternative proposal based on solid-state direct FPC using a SINIS (S = superconductor, N = normal metal, I = insulator) single-electron transistor (SET) accurately injecting $N$ (integer) quasiparticles (qps) per cycle to both leads with discrete energies close to their superconducting gap $\Delta$, even at zero drain-source voltage. Furthermore, the bias voltage plays an important role in the distribution of the power among the two leads, allowing for an almost equal injection $N\Delta f$ to the two. We estimate that under appropriate conditions errors can be well below $1\%$.

arXiv commentIncludes supplementary information

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Nonlocal quantum heat engines made of hybrid superconducting devices
• Quantum thermodynamics with a single superconducting vortex
• Applications of Superconductor-Normal Metal Interfaces
• Ultimate accuracy of frequency to power conversion by single-electron injection
• Electron-phonon heat transfer in giant vortex states
• Zero-average bias bidirectional single-electron current generation in a hybrid turnstile
• Photonic Negative Differential Thermal Conductance Enabled by NIS Junctions
• Suppression of back-tunnelling events in hybrid single-electron turnstiles by source-drain bias modulation