A gate-tunable, field-compatible fluxonium

  • Marta Pita-Vidal ,
  • Arno Bargerbos ,
  • Chung-Kai Yang ,
  • David J. van Woerkom ,
  • Wolfgang Pfaff ,
  • Nadia Haider ,
  • ,
  • Leo Kouwenhoven ,
  • ,
  • Angela Kou

Physical review applied | , Vol 14(6)

Circuit quantum electrodynamics, where photons are coherently coupled to artificial atoms built with superconducting circuits, has enabled the investigation and control of macroscopic quantum-mechanical phenomena in superconductors. Recently, hybrid circuits incorporating semiconducting nanowires and other electrostatically-gateable elements have provided new insights into mesoscopic superconductivity. Extending the capabilities of hybrid flux-based circuits to work in magnetic fields would be especially useful both as a probe of spin-polarized Andreev bound states and as a possible platform for topological qubits. The fluxonium is particularly suitable as a readout circuit for topological qubits due to its unique persistent-current based eigenstates. In this Letter, we present a magnetic-field compatible hybrid fluxonium with an electrostatically-tuned semiconducting nanowire as its non-linear element. We operate the fluxonium in magnetic fields up to 1T and use it to observe the $\varphi_0$-Josephson effect. This combination of gate-tunability and field-compatibility opens avenues for the exploration and control of spin-polarized phenomena using superconducting circuits and enables the use of the fluxonium as a readout device for topological qubits.