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# The calculation of total reaction cross sections induced by intermediate energy 𝛼-particles with BUU Model

thanks: Supported by the Major State Basic Research Programme in China under Grant No. G2000077404thanks: E-Mail address: ZhongC@sinr.ac.cn

## Abstract

The Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (BUU) Model, which includes the Fermi motion, the mean field, individual nucleon-nucleon (N-N) interactions and the Pauli blocking effect etc., is used to calculate the total reaction cross section $`\sigma _R`$ induced by $`\alpha `$-particles on different targets in the incident energy range from 17.4 to 48.1 MeV/u. The calculation result can reproduce the experimental data well. The nucleus-nucleus interaction radius parameter $`r_0`$ was extracted from experimental $`\sigma _R`$. It is found that $`r_0`$ becomes constant with increasing the mass number of target.

The total reaction cross section, $`\sigma _R`$, is one of the most fundamental quantities characterizing the nuclei and the nuclear reaction. It can be used to deduce the nuclear size and it relates with nuclear equation of state (EOS) and in-medium (N-N) cross section also. It has been extensively studied both theoretically and experimentally. Hussein1 ; Tan1 ; Tan2 ; Shen89 ; Cai00 ; Cai01 ; Ma1 ; Ma2 ; Ber88 ; Mit1 ; Sai1 ; Oza1 ; Oza2 ; Feng1 ; Feng2 ; Fang99 ; Fang01 ; Vis1 ; Meng02  There are, however, very few experimental results of the total reaction cross sections, $`\sigma _R`$, for light-ions like $`p`$, $`d`$, 3He, $`\alpha `$ etc. Recently $`\sigma _R`$ for $`\alpha `$-particles, 3He, $`d`$ and proton on 9Be, 12C, 16O, 28Si, 40Ca, 58,60Ni, 112,116,120,124Sn, and 208Pb targets have been measured at energies around several tens MeV/nucleon. It provided an exciting chance to understand the mechanism of nuclear reaction and give a more reliable test of different models. The measurements were performed with a well-collimated and momentum analyzed beam from the Gustaf Werner cyclotron at The Svedberg Laboratory. The beam energy spread was approximated 100 keV (FWHM), and the intensity was typically $`2\times 10^4`$ particles per second. A detailed description of the apparatus and experimental technique is given in Refs.Car1 ; Ing1 ; Ing2 ; Ing3 ; Auce1 ; Auce2 .

The results induced by light-ions are compared with predictions from microscopic Glauber multile-scattering theory which is based on the individual nucleon-nucleon (N-N) collisions in the overlap volume of the colliding nuclei.Vis1 ; Ing1 ; Ing2 ; Ing3 ; Auce1 ; Auce2 ; Ray1 ; War1 ; Maj1 ; Rid1  This Glauber model calculation is a useful tool to study $`\sigma _R`$. It considers the Coulomb correction, uses Yukawa interaction with finite range force and distinguishes neutron and proton inside nuclei. Comparisons of $`\sigma _R`$ at relativistic energy with that at intermediate energies for projectiles heavier than $`\alpha `$-particle have been done by Ozawa *et al*.Oza1 ; Oza2  The result calculated by the Glauber model is always underestimated $`\sigma _R`$ at intermediate energies. This problem has been solved now partly by few body Glauber model. For light-ions like $`p`$, $`d`$, 3He, $`\alpha `$ etc., Glauber model can fit experimental results, but the fit quality do not so well. Some nuclear transport theories such as the Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (BUU) model and quantum molecular dynamics (QMD) have been applied into the calculation of $`\sigma _R`$ to resolve this problem also.Cai00 ; Cai01 ; Ma1 ; Ma2 ; Ber88  These models incorporate the Fermi motion, the mean field, individual nucleon-nucleon(N-N) interactions and the Pauli blocking effect etc. in calculation. They should be more suitable for total reaction cross section calculation in intermediate incident energy. Test particles method and the grid method originated from the fluid mechanics had been introduced to revolve the BUU equation by C.Y. Wong et al. More details can be found in Ref.Wong1 . For medium projectiles, BUU model have been applied to calculate the total cross section successfully,Cai00  So it is interesting whether BUU calculation can be used in the calculation of total reaction cross section induced by light ions like $`\alpha `$-particle.

In this letter we used the BUU model to calculate the total reaction cross sections, $`\sigma _R`$, measured for 17.4 to 48.1 MeV $`\alpha `$-particles on targets from 9Be to 208Pb.Ing2 ; Auce1  Within the framework of BUU model and according to Poisson Statistics, the average $`N`$-$`N`$ collision number can be obtained as a function of the impact parameter $`b`$ by assuming a reasonable parameterization of $`\sigma _{NN}`$. The probability of $`n`$ times $`N`$-$`N`$ collisions $`T_n(b)`$ the course of nucleus-nucleus reaction can be easily obtained in BUU calculation. The sum of $`T_n(b)`$ over $`n(n1)`$ represents the total probability of $`N`$-$`N`$ collisions and is related closely to the absorption probability of nuclear reaction. Therefore, the total reaction cross section is given by

$$\sigma _R=2\pi \left[\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}T_n(b)\right]b\text{d}b=2\pi \left[1\text{exp}(N)\right]b\text{d}b$$
(1)
where $`N`$ is the average $`N`$-$`N`$ collision number. More details can be found in Ref.Ma1 . The BUU equation can be used to extract nuclear equation of state (EOS) and in-medium $`N`$-$`N`$ cross section ,$`\sigma _{NN}^{inmedium}`$, etc., from the analysis of the experimental excitation function for the total reaction cross section, $`\sigma _R`$, if we know the nucleon density distribution for the projectile and target.Ma1 ; Ma2

The projectile and target nucleus are stable nucleus here in this paper, so the well-known Cugnon’s parameterization $`\sigma _{Cug}`$ for $`\sigma _{NN}`$Cug1 , soft EOS, and square-type density distribution are used in the BUU calculation.Cai00  Then the Nucleus-Nucleus interaction radius parameter $`r_0`$ can be deduced by fitting experimental data at one incident energy, which is 48.1 MeV in this paper. As shown in Fig. 1, the experimental data are indicated by closed circles. Solid curves indicated the calculated results by using the BUU model. As seen, the energy dependence changes with the mass number of targets. These experimental data induced by $`\alpha `$-particles are in very well agreement with our calculated results for all targets at all experimental incident energy, where the experimental data at incident energy 48.1MeV were used in fitting procedure to get $`r_0`$. For light targets the total reaction cross section decreases with increasing energy, in agreement with what is expected from the energy dependence of nucleon-nucleon scattering cross section. For medium and heavy targets, however, the total reaction cross section remains more or less independent of energy and geometrical effects seem to dominate. For medium and heavy-targets at low energies, maybe, Coulomb repulsion suppresses the increase of the total reaction cross section with decreasing the incident energy. The experimental results produced by heavier projectiles indicates also that for light target the total reaction cross sections are much more sensitive to the nucleon-nucleon interaction. The total reaction cross sections induced by deuterons and protons shown same tendency either for the experimental results or for BUU calculation.

The dependence of the total reaction cross section on the atomic mass of target and projectile has been parameterized in many forms. According to the strong absorption model, the total reaction cross section $`\sigma _R`$ can be represented in terms of the interaction radius $`R`$ and nucleus-nucleus interaction barrier $`B`$, as

$$\sigma _R=10\pi R^2(1B/E_{C.M.})(mb)$$
(2)
where $`R`$ in fm and $`E_{C.M.}`$ in MeV. Different parameterized formulas will have different parameterized forms for $`R`$ and $`B`$. Shen et al Shen89  propose a unified parametrized formula for $`\sigma _R`$ using:

$$B=\frac{1.44Z_rZ_p}{r}b\frac{R_tR_p}{R_t+R_p}(MeV)$$
(3)
$`R=r_0\left[A_t^{1/3}+A_p^{1/3}+1.85{\displaystyle \frac{A_t^{1/3}A_p^{1/3}}{A_t^{1/3}+A_p^{1/3}}}C(E)\right]+`$
$`\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{(A_t2Z_t)Z_p}{A_tA_p}}+\beta E_{C.M.}^{1/3}{\displaystyle \frac{A_t^{1/3}A_p^{1/3}}{A_t^{1/3}+A_p^{1/3}}}`$ (4)
where $`r=R_t+R_p+3.2fm,`$ $`b=1Mevfm^1,`$ $`R_I=1.12A_i^{1/3}0.94A_i^{1/3},(i=t,p).`$ $`\alpha =1fm,\beta =0.176MeV^{1/3}fm`$ and the experience value around $`1.0fm`$ was used normaly for $`r_0`$. The nucleon radius parameter $`r_0`$ was also extracted from $`\sigma _R`$ calculated by BUU for 48.1MeV incident energy. As seen, this radius decreases with the mass number for light nuclei, but it stays essentially constant at around 1.0 fm for heavy nuclei, as shown in Fig. 2.

The open stars denoted the calculations by using the BUU model. And the open circles denoted the calculations by using the Eq(2-3-4) for 48.1MeV incident energy also. The deduced $`r_0`$ via BUU can fit the results deduced from the parametrized formula of Shen. It seems that the deduce $`r_0`$ shows similar trend with the parametrized formula calculations. For 9Be, it has two-$`\alpha `$ plus one neutron structure, so the radium is larger. Our calculation shows this enhance of radium. S.Q. Zhang and J. Meng propose a unified parametrized formula for the nuclear charge radii using Eq(5-6)SQZhang02 . Obvious Eq.6 is exactly the isospin-dependent $`A^{1/3}`$ formula. It is interesting to study the isospin-dependent of the target and the nuclear charge radii in the future.

$`R_c`$ $`=`$ $`r_ZZ^{1/3}=r_Z({\displaystyle \frac{A}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{NZ}{2}})`$ (5)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_Z}{2^{1/3}}}(1{\displaystyle \frac{NZ}{A}})^{1/3}`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_Z}{2^{1/3}}}(1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{NZ}{A}})`$ (6)
The total reaction cross section calculated by BUU is sensitive with the test particles number. An important peculiar characteristic of the the test particles simulation is to allow many test particles to represent one nucleon so as to gain a clear insight into the dynamics of nuclear systems in heavy-ion dynamics. In order to assess the test particles simulation as a steady and useful concept, we wish to carry out some numerical calculations and compare them. We examined the dynamics at 48.1MeV. The calculated results, here it is the total reaction cross section, should reach stable saturation with increasing the test particles number. In our calculations, the calculation with different test particles was carried out and the minimum test particle number is obtained. As shown in Fig. 3, we use different numbers test particles to describe the dynamics. For 9Be, in order to get the steady total reaction cross section the test particles are 1000 at least. And for 12C, 400 test particles are enough. For 208Pb, 200 test particles are enough even. It shows that we can get steady $`\sigma _{total}`$ for $`\alpha `$-particle as projectile and very light target as 9Be when the test particles numbers is large enough.

In summary, we have presented the BUU Model calculation for the total reaction cross sections induced by $`\alpha `$-particles at intermediate energies on targets from 9Be to 208Pb. The BUU calculations can fit the experimental data very well. The nucleus-nucleus interaction radius parameter $`r_0`$ have been deduced from the BUU’s calculation. It is found that $`r_0`$ becomes constant with increasing the mass number of target and shows similar trend with the parametrized formula calculations. It shows that the total reaction cross sections induced by light-ion like $`\alpha `$-particle can be calculated by the BUU Model. Although the projectile has few nucleons, the BUU calculation can be used still for the total reaction cross section calculation if large enough test particle number was used. Because test particle method, here in this paper different test particles were used The minimum test particle number ,which is needed for simulating one nucleon in order to get back enough statistics and fit the experimental total reaction cross section, is a function of the target mass number, it decrease with increasing the target mass number.

This work is supported by the Major State Basic Research Development Program in China under contract No. G200077400 and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract 10125521.


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# Quantum computing with an inhomogeneously broadened ensemble of ions: Suppression of errors from detuning variations by specially adapted pulses and coherent population trapping.

## I introduction

Rare-earth ions doped into inorganic crystals experience inhomogeneous broadening. If the doping concentration is high, a near field probe is able to address individual ions and to induce resonant excitation hopping among nearby ions which can hereby be used for quantum computing lukinhemmer . Along similar lines, the rare-earth-ion-doped inorganic crystal proposal for quantum computing (REQC) was developed nicklas . Instead of excitation hopping, it uses a dipole blockade mechanism, similar to the Rydberg blockade mechanism for neutral atoms rydberg , which conditions gate operations on the interaction between a pair of ions exceeding a certain threshold rather than having a precise value. The REQC proposal identifies qubit registers as entire ensembles of collections of interacting ions, selected by their response to radiation at certain frequencies, and distributed over the spatial extent of the crystal.

There is a trade-off between the number of registers accepted by the spectroscopic selection and the precision we can request for their transition frequencies and coupling strengths, and hence, ultimately, between the scalability of the concept and the fidelity of the gate operations. Gate operations are needed that can be carried out with high fidelity, even if the physical parameters of the system are allowed to vary, and following strong and convincing recommendations by Jones jones , we apply composite rotation techniques from liquid and solid state NMR to the problem. Our method, which also involves quantum optical interference techniques, is described in detail for the REQC scheme, but in the conclusion we shall comment on its possible application to a number of other quantum computing proposals.

## II Rare-earth-ion quantum computing scheme

In the rare-earth ion scheme for quantum computing, qubits are encoded in two ground hyperfine levels $`|0`$ and $`|1`$ of the dopant ions, which are only negligibly disturbed by the interaction with the crystal host. Excited states of the ions interact more strongly with the crystal, and this gives rise to significant broadening of the optical transition between the qubit states and the excited state. The characteristic feature of the proposal is the identification and initialization of the qubits and qubit registers in the crystal: The $`i`$th qubit is chosen as the ensemble of ions within the inhomogeneously broadened line which have their absorption frequency at a chosen frequency $`\nu _i`$. Ions in a frequency window around the qubit channel are pumped to auxiliary states to prevent them from being excited by the near resonant laser light at the qubit frequencies, see Fig. 1.

The excited state of an ion establishes a surrounding permanent dipole field, which shifts the transition frequencies in neighboring ions and which can hence control their interaction with a laser field. Pairs of interacting qubits $`(i,j)`$ are hence identified, or rather selected, spectroscopically, by pumping away those ions which do not have their transition frequency shifted out of the frequency window around the channel frequency $`\nu _{j(i)}`$ by the dipole-field, when neighboring ions in the channel $`i(j)`$ are excited. Physically, the crystal still contains all the ions, but around frequency channels $`\nu _{j(i)}`$, the ions, populating the qubit levels, are found in close lying pairs, since all ions with insufficient excited state interaction have been deported to passive spectator levels. The ensemble of ions in frequency channels $`\nu _i`$ and $`\nu _j`$ thus constitute pairs of mutually interacting ions. Theoretical estimates nicklas  and preliminary experiments mattias  suggest that the dipole energy shifts easily amount to several MHz, and the ions can be excited with Rabi frequencies in the MHz range. The homogeneous linewidth is small corresponding to excited state lifetimes on the msec scale, whereas the qubit states have lifetimes of seconds with coherence times in the msec range with possibilities for increases up to several hundred msecs in the presence of magnetic fields annabel .

The implementation proposed in Ref. nicklas  for a C-NOT operation, with qubit $`i`$ as control bit and qubit $`j`$ as target bit, is shown in Fig. 2. If qubit $`i`$ is initially in state $`|0`$i, it is excited by the first pulse, and the resulting frequency shift of qubit $`j`$ makes the steps 2, 3 and 4 non-resonant, hence nothing happens, and qubit $`i`$ is finally returned to its initial state. If qubit $`i`$ is in state $`|1`$i, there is no frequency shift, and the resonant processes 2, 3 and 4, effectively exchange states $`|0_j`$ and $`|1_j`$, as desired for the operation.

## III High-fidelity $`\pi `$-pulses

To have a sufficiently large number of active ions, and hence an appreciable number of quantum registers with, e.g., three or more coupled qubits, it is necessary to use ions with frequencies in a not too narrowly defined interval. The widths of the qubit channels, however, imply that the transitions 1–5 in Fig. 2 will not be resonant for all ions, and this seriously compromises the gate fidelity in the system. One could apply very short pulses which are less sensitive to the resonance criterion, but they would excite ions outside the windows around the frequency channels, and they would not display the required sensitivity to the frequency shift on ion $`j`$ due to the excitation of ion $`i`$ in the two-bit gate. In a recent paper cirac  it was proposed to use a combination of adiabatic processes and coherent control theory to increase the tolerance to variations in physical parameters in a quantum computing model, but very high fidelity was only achieved with very slow processes, which would be compromised by decoherence and decay in the REQC proposal. Instead, we shall present and compare the advantages of two different realizations (composite rotation and complex hyperbolic secant pulse) of $`\pi `$-pulses, which rapidly transfer population completely from one state to another in a two-level system, as long as the detuning of the transition lies within a 1 MHz wide interval, but which does not transfer any population if the detuning exceeds just a few MHz. Composite pulses were, in fact, already used in quantum computing experiments with trapped ions blatt\_nature , not to correct for variations in physical parameters, but to obtain $`\pi `$ and $`4\pi `$ Bloch sphere rotations on two different transitions where the Rabi frequencies differed by a factor of $`\sqrt{2}`$. We shall propose a combination of coherent population trapping and $`\pi `$-pulse rotations as a means to make robust qubit rotations through arbitrary angles and on arbitrary qubit states.

### III.1 Composite pulses

Composite pulses can be assigned to two main classes, *A* and *B*, where pulses of type *A* produce a fully compensated rotation of the system for all initial states, whereas pulses of type *B* provide the compensated transformation only for particular initial states. Levitt levitt  has tabulated several sequences of rectangular pulses that provide net $`90^{}`$ and $`180^{}`$ Bloch sphere rotations of two-level systems and which are more tolerant to frequency detunings than a single pulse. Because of the high frequency components of the rectangular pulses, these pulses do not, however, satisfactorily exclude excitation of the surrounding ions, and we have instead studied composite pulses based on Gaussian field envelopes. On resonance, the accomplishments of a laser pulse is governed only by pulse area and phase, and hence it is natural to replace a rectangular pulse sequence with a sequence of Gaussian pulses with the same areas and phases $`(\theta _k,\phi _k)`$, i.e., with the time dependent Rabi frequencies

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_R(t)=\underset{k}{}\frac{\theta _ke^{i\phi _k}}{\sqrt{2\pi \sigma ^2}}e^{\left(tt_k\right)^2/2\sigma ^2},t[t_ka,t_k+a].$$
(1)
Composite rotations correct errors to high order, and there is a good portion of experience and magic in the design of good sequences. Merely replacing rectangular pulses with Gaussian pulses of equal pulse area and phase does therefore not optimally preserve the error compensating properties. The composite rotation with rectangular pulses, $`90_{90}180_090_{90}`$ foot , provides an error compensated $`\pi `$-pulse of type *B*, and the left panel in Fig. 3 illustrates its tolerance to detuning errors on the 1 MHz scale, but also its erroneous excitation of ions more than 5 MHz away from the channel frequency. Gaussian pulses with the same areas give a better performance without the off-resonant excitations, but we may do even better by slightly adjusting the pulse areas and phases. We have done this in a variational approach, assuming three pulses, and hence six free area and phase parameters. For comparison, we choose the same duration of the rectangular pulse and the Gaussian pulse sequences and a temporal cut-off $`a=3.5\sigma `$, so that the pulses are truncated when the amplitude is $`0.2\%`$ of its maximum. By insisting on perfect operation on resonance and minimum errors for a set of detunings, we have used a variational search to identify an optimum Gaussian pulse sequence with pulse areas and phases $`92.50_{96.98}192.00_{6.86}92.42_{96.23}`$. Simulations of the excitation with this composite pulse are plotted in the right panel of Fig. 3. It has been been shown janus  that composite pulses can satisfactorily deal with errors in coupling strengths, e.g., due to spatial inhomogeneities of the field strength or variations of the transition dipole moments in the ions, but a gate that works for all input states was not identified in that work, and no solution was presented for the important case of detuning errors in the REQC proposal.

### III.2 Complex hyperbolic secant pulse

As shown by Silver et al. silver , complex hyperbolic secant pulses offer an alternative process, of class *B*, with the desired properties. The complex Rabi frequency, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_R(t)`$ of the complex hyperbolic secant pulse is given by

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_R(t)=\mathrm{\Omega }_0\left\{\mathrm{sech}\left[\beta \left(tt_0\right)\right]\right\}^{1+i\mu },$$
(2)
where $`\mu `$ is a real constant, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ is the maximum Rabi frequency and $`\beta `$ is related to the FWHM of the pulse. This corresponds to a real sech pulse envelope in combination with a tanh frequency sweep around the carrier laser frequency $`\nu _L`$:

$`|\mathrm{\Omega }_R(t)|`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0\mathrm{sech}\left(\beta \left(tt_0\right)\right),`$ (3)
$`\nu (t)`$ $`=`$ $`\nu _L+\mu \beta \mathrm{tanh}\left(\beta \left(tt_0\right)\right).`$ (4)
The excitation by such a pulse is shown in Fig. 4 as a function of the detuning $`(\nu _L\nu _i)`$.

In addition to its favorable tolerance to detuning errors, the complex sech pulse is independent of pulse amplitude if only it exceeds a critical threshold. Its disadvantage compared to the composite Gaussian pulse is the double implementation time.

## IV Arbitrary rotations, compensation of phase shifts

### IV.1 Using dark states for arbitrary qubit rotations

The pulses described are excellent for steps 1–2 and 4–5 in the C-NOT scheme in Fig. 2, since the initial states are explicitly known for all these processes due to the fact that the excited state is unpopulated when the operation starts. The initial state before step 3, however, is an unknown superposition state of $`|1`$j and $`|e`$j, and a class *A* pulse is required to perform a perfect $`\pi `$-pulse on that state. Such composite pulses exist based upon square pulses, but they are difficult to build with Gaussian pulses, and, we also find it difficult to make composite pulses for arbitrary rotations, since the ones provided in the literature often involve a larger number of pulses of which some are rather short, and hence, they will interact with ions outside the hole burnt structures. Instead, we propose an alternative technique, which does not require class *A* pulses but nevertheless offers robust arbitrary rotations in the qubit space. To this purpose, we shall make use of the full three-level structure of the ions and turn on fields with complex Rabi frequencies $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{R0}(t)e^{i\phi _0}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{R1}(t)e^{i\phi _1}`$ that simultaneously couple $`|0_j`$ and $`|1_j`$ to $`|e_j`$. The system now has two ground state superpositions, that will be respectively coupled and uncoupled to the excited state. If $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{R0}(t)=\mathrm{\Omega }_{R1}(t)`$ we can define a new orthonormal basis according to

$$\{\begin{array}{cc}|\overline{0}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(|0e^{i\varphi }|1\right)\hfill & \\ |\overline{1}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(|0+e^{i\varphi }|1\right)\hfill & \end{array}.$$
(5)
If the relative phase of the two fields are chosen so that $`\phi _1\phi _0=\varphi `$, only $`|\overline{1}`$ couples to the excited state while $`|\overline{0}`$ is a dark state, unchanged by the interaction with the fields, and vice versa if $`\phi _1\phi _0=\varphi +\pi `$. Applying constant phase factors $`e^{i\phi _0},e^{i\phi _1}`$ on the sequence of Gaussian pulse or the complex sech pulse described above, we can therefore implement a robust $`\pi `$-pulse of class *B*, i.e., from the south pole to the north pole on the Bloch sphere of states $`|e`$ and $`|\overline{1}`$. If we drive the state back down again by a new $`\pi `$-pulse with a phase that is shifted by $`\pi +\theta `$ in comparison to the first one, the net effect becomes a robust phase shift on state $`|\overline{1}`$,

$$|\overline{1}e^{i\theta }|\overline{1}.$$
(6)
In the original qubit basis ($`|0`$,$`|1`$), this procedure is equivalent to the unitary operation

$$U=e^{i\frac{\theta }{2}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}& ie^{i\varphi }\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}\\ ie^{i\varphi }\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}& \mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}\end{array}\right),$$
(7)
i.e., a general unitary rotation in the qubit state basis. A NOT operation is achieved if $`\theta `$ and $`\varphi `$ are both set to $`\pi `$, but we note that this approach offers any arbitrary qubit rotation, based exclusively on class *B* $`\pi `$-pulses which, in turn, can be implemented in a robust manner by the pulses analyzed in Figs. 3 and 4. A similar combination of coupled and uncoupled superposition states and the STIRAP process was recently proposed kis .

### IV.2 Phase compensation

The Bloch sphere rotations introduce detuning and time dependent phases on the individual ions. A phase factor can be considered as global, and thus disregarded only if it appears in front of all qubit states. The two states involved in the above rotations are $`|\overline{1}`$ and $`|e`$ of the target bit, and one must necessarily arrange for the same phase to be acquired by $`|\overline{0}`$. We hence suggest to apply compensating pulses, which have no other effect than to introduce the same detuning dependent phase shift on that state, that is a composite or complex sech $`\pi `$-pulse followed by the inverse $`\pi `$-pulse, i.e., with a phase shift of $`\pi `$ (but no $`\theta `$), on $`|\overline{0}|e`$. The choice of implementation and the duration of these pulses must be the same as those applied to $`|\overline{1}|e`$ for the detuning dependent phases to be accurately compensated.

If the operation is a C-NOT operation, i.e. a two-bit operation, we will come across two different detuning dependent phase factors, one dependent on the detuning of the target ion and the other dependent on the detuning of the control ion. Since the detunings, and hence the phase factors, are unknown and not necessarily equal, we have to make sure that every qubit state acquires both phase factors in order to be able to consider the total unknown phase as global. The target qubit rotations, described above, only took place for the state vector components with the control qubit in the state $`|1`$, and, thus, conditioned on the control bit being in state $`|0`$, we apply a new sequence of compensating pulses to the target states $`|\overline{0}`$ and $`|\overline{1}`$ so that all states $`|00`$, $`|01`$, $`|10`$ and $`|11`$ finally are equipped with the same detuning dependent phases.

## V Complete gate sequence, numerical results.

The implementation scheme for a C-NOT operation with qubit $`i`$ as control bit and qubit $`j`$ as target bit is summarized in Table 1, and we draw the attention to the fact that 12 $`\pi `$-pulses (which are all composite or complex sech pulses, but not of class *A*) are applied. This scheme also suffices if the desired gate is a given rotation of the target bit, conditioned on the control bit; only the phase of pulse 3 in the sequence should be adjusted accordingly. Simulations according to this scheme have been performed by solving the equations of motion in the space spanned by the nine states $`|a_ib_j`$, where $`a,b=0,1,e`$. An example of the final state after action of the C-NOT operation on an initially entangled state of the qubits is shown in Fig. 5.

For simplicity, the detuning parameter was assumed to be the same for the control and target ions in the calculations leading to Fig. 5. The C-NOT operation effectively exchanges the amplitudes and hence the populations on states $`|10`$ and $`|11`$, and this is precisely what we observe for all detunings in the central 1 MHz wide frequency interval, whereas nothing happens to the state of ions more than 5 MHz away from the exciting lasers. The intermediate frequency intervals are irrelevant, since they contain no ions, see Fig. 1. Decay and decoherence become important on the msec time scale, and it is hence important that the gates are fast on this time scale. The total duration of the operation is 18 $`\mu `$s if all $`\pi `$-pulses are implemented with composite pulses and 36 $`\mu `$s if they are implemented with complex sech pulses.

In Fig. 6, we show the results of our simulations when the control and target detunings are allowed to both vary independently within the central 1 MHz wide frequency channel. The four sub-plots show the populations, which are also presented in Fig. 5, and we see that the deviations on the edges of the frequency interval are barely $`10^3`$ when the 12 $`\pi `$-pulses are realized with complex sech pulses whereas implementation with composite Gaussian pulses results in deviations on the order of $`10^2`$. The relative phases between the four states are accurate to the level of 1 degree for both kinds of pulses.

## VI Discussion

We have shown that composite and complex sech pulses can be applied in combination with coherent population trapping to perform accurate quantum gate operations on ions in the REQC quantum computing proposal. The composite Gaussian pulses do not reach the same high fidelity as the complex sech pulse. But, they are twice as fast and higher accuracies may be achieved with improved optimization. The combined tolerance to detuning errors on one frequency scale and frequency selectivity on a single order of magnitude larger scale are necessary to make quantum computing feasible at all in the REQC proposal, and the first experiments to test our gates are in preparation. Our theory also provide important ingredients for the further development of the proposal, in particular it contributes significantly to the scalability to larger numbers of coupled qubits.

The achievements of the fault tolerant pulses are remarkable, and it is clear that many quantum optics and quantum information tasks may benefit from their introduction. Other proposals exist for quantum computing where individual addressing of qubits is made spectroscopically, e.g., of optically trapped neutral atoms in inhomogeneous magnetic fields lattice , of trapped ions in inhomogeneous magnetic wunderlich  and optical dipole fields staanum . Here, tolerance to variations in the detuning may be desirable as in the present work. Likewise, systems which use spatial addressing may suffer from difficulties of focusing the fields on single qubits, and here tolerance of the relevant qubit to variations around the maximum field and of the neighboring qubits to small variations around the desired vanishing field can be accommodated by only slight modifications of the techniques presented in this paper.

## Acknowledgments

Discussions with Stefan Kröll and with Janus Wesenberg are gratefully acknowledged. This work was carried out under the REQC and ESQUIRE projects supported by the IST-FET program of the EC.


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# Spontaneous emission of a small source of light.

## 1 Introduction.

The spontaneous emission may be considered as an amplification of the zero point field . However it seems that the zero point field is twice more effective than the ordinary fields .

The starting point of this conclusion is the classical computation of the rate at which an oscillating dipole absorbs energy from a plane wave through its electric field, and diffracts a fraction of this energy .

The radiation reaction provides the energy necessary to double the spontaneous excitation of a source due to the zero point field; but this computation fails because in the amplification of a beam of light (hot, i.e. $`T>0`$ in Planck’s law) the zero point field is not a data of the problem.

The origin of the radiation reaction is the interaction between the charges and the electromagnetic field they produce, leading to Abraham-Lorentz  or Ford-O’Connell  formula. The computations require a model of source, including implicit or explicit Poincaré stresses.

Avoiding the choice of a model of source, using only Maxwell’s equations in the vacuum thanks to Schwarzschild-Fokker’s trick, reduces the precision of a theory, but allows to fix the limits of all possible computations: It will be supposed only that a small source made of charges radiates an electromagnetic field which obeys Maxwell’s equations.

Section 2 recalls the theory of the modes of an electromagnetic field in the vacuum.

Section 3 shows how the Schwarzschild-Fokker’s trick allows to use the modes with sources.

Section 4 shows that a source can absorb the whole energy of the eigenmode it is able to emit, while its excitation by an other mode requires a projection on the eigenmode which reduces the excitation.

The following classical computation starts the demonstration at the beginning, Maxwell’s equations. The electromagnetic field will be generally simply named “field”, and represented by its electric field, the magnetic part being implied.

## 2 Mathematical modes of the electromagnetic field in the vacuum.

In the vacuum, without sources, Helmoltz’s equation for the electric field $`E`$, which may be deduced from Maxwell’s equations reduces to:

$$^\mathrm{𝟐}𝐄\frac{1}{c^2}\frac{^2𝐄}{t^2}=0$$
(1)
In the whole space, or in a region limited by perfectly conducting walls, this equation is linear, so that its solutions named “modes” build a vector space.

As there is nether sources, nor loss of energy, the energy $`W`$ of an electromagnetic field may be computed at any time by the following integration:

$$W=(1/2)[ϵ_0𝐄^2+\mu _0𝐇^2]𝑑V$$
(2)
In Physics, the result must be finite, so that plane waves are necessarily approximations.

The energy of the sum of two modes is generally not the sum of the energies of each; else, the modes are orthogonal. To avoid confusions, the energy of a mode supposed alone in the universe will be named “energy of the bare mode” or “bare energy”; next section will show that bare energies do not exist in physics.

If the energy of a bare mode is finite, the mode may be normalised multiplying $`𝐄`$ and $`𝐇`$ by a constant such that, if $`e(\nu )\mathrm{d}\nu `$ is the energy of the mode between $`\nu `$ and $`\nu +\mathrm{d}\nu `$,

$$\frac{e(\nu )d\nu }{h\nu }=1.$$
(3)
Thus orthonormal, or at least orthogonal reference frames may be built in the space of the modes.

Remark that introducing a new electromagnetic field into an existing electromagnetic field does not necessarily increase the energy; in particular, introducing a field exactly opposite to an existing field cancels all, so that the energy falls to zero, it is the absorption of the initial field.

## 3 Schwarzschild-Fokker’s trick.

These authors replace charges by convenient fields which provide the same field without the charges.

A source supposed invariant by a time inversion (for instance a temporary dipole) radiates an emission field named “retardated eigenfield” of the source. Adding this solution of nonlinear Maxwell’s equations and its Charge-Time inverse (absorption eigenfield or “advanced field”), the charges making the source cancel, so that we obtain a solution of the linear Maxwell’s equations. The advanced field is a field converging to the virtual source; used to replace a real source in a mathematical representation, it has generally no physical existence, while approximate realisations may be tried222In laser fusion experiments for instance..

Most usual sources (electron, atoms, molecules) are small in comparison with their distances, so that the electromagnetic field that they radiate is large close to them, small close to other sources. Using the trick, the absorption of the field radiated by a source, close to the source, requires the sum of a lot of small fields radiated by other sources, so that it requires a lot of time; meanwhile it remains a field. As this may be applied to all sources, it exists a residual field which is, at least, the field which remains in the dark, at 0 Kelvin. It is an absolutely normal field.

Far from sources, this field is stochastic, but it may be amplified by sources, leaving its pure stochastic nature333For this reason, we prefer “zero point field” to “stochastic field”.. From the building of electromagnetic fields by amplification of existing fields, it appears that it is physically meaningless to split the field $`𝐄`$ of a mode into a zero point part $`𝐙`$ and the remainder: $`𝐙`$ can only be obtained by an attenuation of $`𝐄`$ by an absorber, so that $`𝐄𝐙`$ is a difference of fields existing in two different points. The flux of energy available in an absorber such as a photocell is proportional to the difference between the square of the incident field $`𝐄`$ and the square of the emergent field $`𝐙`$. The first approximation which neglects the zero point field fails in the detection of low fields, in particular in photon counting experiments.

The mean value of the energy of a field in a monochromatic mode is given by the second Planck’s law:

$$W_\nu =h\nu \left[\frac{1}{\mathrm{exp}(h\nu /kT)1}+\frac{1}{2}\right]$$
(4)
It is a mean energy, subject to fluctuations.

## 4 Excitation of a source: spontaneous and stimulated emissions.

The spontaneous emission is considered as an amplification of the energy of a mode, an absorption as a reduction of this energy, possibly down to the zero point energy. If the source is a molecule whose classical eigenstates are minimums of potential, a transition is possible if the molecule gets enough energy to reach the threshold between two minimums by an absorption, at Planck’s frequency. If the threshold is very low, as in a photocell, the fluctuations of the zero point field are sufficient to provide the needed energy.

In classical electromagnetism, the absorption of an electromagnetic field is its cancellation by an opposite field; using Schwarzschild-Fokker’s trick, a source is replaced by a field and the cancellation of fields may be studied at any time.

All electromagnetic fields may be decomposed on a set of orthogonal modes including the eigenmode of the source. All modes orthogonal to the eigenmode cannot exchange energy with the source (replaced by the advanced field), so that the source can only be excited by the component of fields on this mode.

It is physically impossible to build a “spherical”444We use improperly “spherical” for the field emitted or absorbed by a point source such as a dipole while it is not invariant by all rotations around an axis which crosses the source. wave to excite a point source. The exciting waves are, in the practice, nearly plane waves. The fraction of the wave which corresponds to the projection of the vector representing the eigenmode of the source on the vector representing the plane wave is absorbed; the remainder is scattered. The decomposition of the field radiated by the multipolar sources into plane waves is well known; one of the plane waves of the decomposition subtracts from the plane exciting wave, the other provide scattered waves. In the general case, the scattered fraction is low if the source has the properties of a good antenna.

The trick cannot be used to compute the energy, the energy must be deduced from all fields; this deduction is generally easy, at least at infinity, in a Fraunhofer computation: Set $`a_iE`$ ($`i=0,1,\mathrm{}`$) the amplitudes of the orthogonal plane waves resulting from the decomposition of the field radiated by a source excited by a wave of amplitude $`E`$, and $`a_0`$ the coefficient corresponding to the mode of the exciting wave. The input energy is proportional to $`E^2`$, the output to $`E^2(|(1+a_0)|^2+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{i>0}|a_i|^2)`$. The scattered energy is $`W_SE^2\mathrm{\Sigma }_{i>0}|a_i|^2`$, while the total absorbed energy is $`W_TE^2(2|a_0|\mathrm{cos}\varphi +|a_0|^2)`$ where $`\varphi `$ is the difference of the phases between the exciting wave and the wave scattered in the same mode; the energy effectively absorbed by the source, which provides its excitation is $`W_E=W_TW_S`$.

The ratio $`\rho =W_E/W_T`$ is between 0 and 1, the last case corresponding to a well adapted antenna.

Studying the spontaneous emission, it is generally obtained that the zero point field is two times more effective than an “ordinary field”. The reason is that this ordinary field is the increase of the zero point field in a plane mode amplified by the exciting source. Remark that the factor 2 requires a model of source, and the introduction the radiation reaction; the hypothesis are the object of a lot of discussions .

## 5 Conclusion.

The present computation of the spontaneous emission as an amplification of the zero point field does not apply to quantum electrodynamics which requires a free change of the mode of a photon through the “reduction of the wave packet”, to allow, for instance, an EPR experiment.

The field which excites a molecule, stimulating an emission, is in a mode that the molecule is able to absorb, that is in the eigenmode of absorption for the transition. The plane mode generally used to excite a molecule, must be projected on the eigenmode while the regular zero point field, which is in the eigenmode of absorption, does not require a projection.

Thus the classical theory explains that an ordinary field is less effective than the zero point field to stimulate an emission, while quantum electrodynamics does not.


text:
# Noise rectification by a superconducting loop with two weak links

## I INTRODUCTION

This study is a cross of two well established phenomena: Brownian motors and fluctuations near a phase transition. The offspring of this combination will be a circuit that can rectify thermal noise and sustain a dc voltage.

Brownian motors are systems in which thermal noise leads to the diffusion of some coordinate (typically, the position of a particle), whereas a time-dependent applied potential (typically, periodic in some direction of space) confines this coordinate and controls how far and when it is allowed to diffuse. If the applied potential is asymmetric, then the fluctuating coordinate drifts in a preferred direction and Brownian motion is rectified. Many reviewsastum1 ; Rei ; astum2 ; RMP ; Zim  and experimentsexp  on Brownian motors are available.

Brownian motors are also called “flashing ratchets”, alluding to the fact that the confining potential pulsates in time. A related phenomenon is a “rocked ratchet”; in this case the confining potential is static, but an additional time-dependent applied potential is superposed to it. This addition distorts the confining potential in such a way that any of its minima can temporarily disappear and the confined object is transferred to the following minimum. A rocked ratchet may also operate without thermal noise.

Phase transitions are usually characterized by an “order parameter” that vanishes for one of the phases and has a non zero value for the other phase. Near a second order phase transition, the equilibrium size of the order parameter is small and can be comparable to that of its thermal fluctuations. The system we will consider is a superconducting loop near its transition temperature. Having a loop automatically provides the periodicity which is encountered in Brownian motors and the presence of permanent currents in a preferred direction might be thought of as a starting point for the required asymmetric potential.

The feature that in my view turns a superconductor into an interesting rectifying system is the presence of two competing currents that are governed by independent fields: the supercurrent is governed by the “order parameter”, whereas the normal current is governed by the electromagnetic field. Both undergo thermal fluctuations. However, the strength of the electromagnetic fluctuations increases with temperature, whereas fluctuations of the order parameter are most important near the critical temperature. This difference gives us the freedom to assign independent sizes to each of these fluctuations. In the system we will study, electromagnetic fluctuations will play the role of “Brownian motion”, whereas fluctuations of the order parameter will cause the time variation of the confining potential.

The simplest superconducting component we can consider is a Josephson junction. A Josephson junction is actually a zero-dimensional superconducting wire: its state is completely described by the values of the order parameter and of the electrochemical potential at its extremes. Therefore, in order to prevent the physical ideas from being obscured by mathematical complexity, we will model our loop by a uniform superconducting wire interrupted by Josephson junctions. Modeling weak links by Josephson junctions will enable us to reduce the dynamics of the system to standard textbook procedures.tink ; likh ; BP  Ideas for using Josephson junctions as rectifying ratchets have been studied in Refs. \[Zapata, ; Falo, ; Weiss, \]. Rectification of the motion of vortices has been considered in Ref. Nori1, .

In the following section we define the system to be considered and the rules that govern its evolution. We also provide some motivation for the choices involved in the model and some heuristics as to why rectification is expected to occur. Section III is a report of the numeric results. In Sec. IV our model will be compared with available experiments. Finally, there is a summary of the achieved results.

## II OUR MODEL

### II.1 Basic Features

Figure 1 shows schematically the system we will study. $`1\pm `$ and $`2\pm `$ are points in the loop. Between $`1+`$ and $`2+`$ (resp. $``$) there is a strong superconducting segment and between $`1+`$ and $`1`$ (resp. $`2`$) there is a weak link. A weak link is a portion of a superconducting wire where superconductivity is weaker, typically, a constriction. These weak links will be modeled by Josephson junctions.

The gauge-invariant phase difference across weak link $`i`$ is defined by $`\gamma _i=\phi _{i+}\phi _i+(2\pi /\mathrm{\Phi }_0)_i^{i+}𝐀𝑑𝐬`$ and the electromotive force by $`V_i=\mu _{i+}\mu _i+(1/c)_i^{i+}(𝐀/t)𝑑𝐬`$, where $`\phi `$ is the phase of the order parameter, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ the quantum of flux (contrary to the electron charge, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0>0`$), $`𝐀`$ is the vector potential, $`\mu `$ the electrochemical potential, $`c`$ the speed of light, $`t`$ the time, and the integrals are performed along the link. For junction 1 the equilibrium value of the critical current will be denoted by $`I_{\mathrm{c0}}`$, the resistance by $`R_1`$, and the capacitance by $`C_1=C`$. For junction 2 the equilibrium value of the critical current will be denoted by $`\alpha I_{\mathrm{c0}}`$ and, in order to reduce the number of parameters in the model, the resistance will be taken as $`R_2=R_1/\alpha `$ and the capacitance as $`C_2=\alpha C`$. $`I_{\mathrm{c0}}`$, $`R_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2\pi c=\mathrm{}/2e`$ will be taken as units; accordingly, the units of voltage, time, capacity and inductance are $`I_{\mathrm{c0}}R_1`$, $`\mathrm{}/2eI_{\mathrm{c0}}R_1`$, $`\mathrm{}/2eI_{\mathrm{c0}}R_1^2`$ and $`\mathrm{}/2eI_{\mathrm{c0}}`$, respectively. In these units the ac Josephson relation is

$$d\gamma _i/dt=V_i.$$
(1)
Additional equations are obtained by equating the current around the loop, which is related to the magnetic flux encircled by the loop, with the current flowing across each junction:

$$I_{\mathrm{J}i}+V_i/R_i+C_idV_i/dt+I_{\mathrm{N}i}=(1)^i(\phi _x+\gamma _2\gamma _1)/L.$$
(2)
$`I_{\mathrm{J}i}`$ is the current that flows across the “pure” junction, $`V_i/R_i`$ the current that ideally flows through the resistor according to Ohm’s law, $`C_idV_i/dt`$ is the current that goes into the capacitor, and $`I_{\mathrm{N}i}`$ is due to thermal fluctuations; $`\phi _x`$ is the magnetic flux induced by external sources multiplied by $`2\pi /\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ and $`L`$ is the self inductance of the loop.

$`I_{\mathrm{N}i}`$ is the usual Johnson–Nyquist current. Let us choose a period of time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ which is large compared to the autocorrelation time, but can be treated as infinitesimal in macroscopic processes. Averaged over $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, $`I_{\mathrm{N}i}`$ has the form

$$\overline{I}_{\mathrm{N1}}=\eta g_1/\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }t};\overline{I}_{\mathrm{N2}}=\eta g_2\sqrt{\alpha /\mathrm{\Delta }t},$$
(3)
with $`\eta ^2=2k_BT/R_1`$, where $`k_B`$ is Boltzmann’s constant, $`T`$ is the temperature, and $`g_{1,2}`$ are random numbers with normal distribution, zero average and unit variance. (This follows since $`(\overline{I}_{\mathrm{N}i}\mathrm{\Delta }t)^2=_0^{\mathrm{\Delta }t}𝑑t^{}_0^{\mathrm{\Delta }t}𝑑t^{\prime \prime }I_{\mathrm{N}i}(t^{})I_{\mathrm{N}i}(t^{\prime \prime })2\mathrm{\Delta }t_0^{\mathrm{}}I_{\mathrm{N}i}(0)I_{\mathrm{N}i}(s)𝑑s=2k_BT\mathrm{\Delta }t/R_i`$.)

### II.2 Heuristic Considerations and Additional Choices

If we ignore $`I_{\mathrm{N}i}`$, Eqs. (1) and (2) predict an evolution for $`\gamma _i`$ that is equivalent to viscous motion down a potential $`(\phi _x+\gamma _2\gamma _1)^2/2L+_1+_2`$, where $`d_i/d\gamma _i=I_{Ji}`$. In order to rectify Brownian motion, there should be some direction in the $`\gamma _{1,2}`$-space such that this potential is periodic and is not symmetric under reflection.

This symmetry breaking cannot be achieved if $`I_{\mathrm{J1}}`$ and $`I_{\mathrm{J2}}`$ are both sinusoidal functions of the phase difference, as is the case for tunnel junctions. Fortunately, for superconducting wires the current-phase dependence becomes sinusoidal only as a limit.Bara ; Kulik ; review  In general, $`I_{\mathrm{J}i}`$ has its maximum away from $`\gamma _i=\pi /2`$. The deviation from sinusoidality can be quite large and $`I_{\mathrm{J}i}`$ can even be multivalued. Various types of nonsinusoidal current-phase relation were also encountered in junctions such as superconductor-ferromagnet-superconductor point contacts.NS

We may gain a better understanding of the present model by reviewing Ref. Bara,  in some detail. This reference considers a long and thin wire $`A`$ with a region of it, denoted by $`B`$, replaced by a different material. $`B`$ is the “weak link”. Both materials are almost identical, the only difference between them being that $`B`$ has a shorter mean free path. The weak link is characterized by two parameters. One of them, denoted by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, is the ratio between Gorkov’s universal function of the impurity parameter for both materials. (Denoting the coherence lengths by $`\xi _{A,B}`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=(\xi _B/\xi _A)^2`$.) The second parameter is the length of $`B`$, which is written as $`2d\xi _A`$. The article provides explicit expressions that exactly solve the Ginzburg–Landau equations and permit to evaluate the current-phase relation for the wire. We are interested in temperature close to critical, so that we should consider $`d1`$; on the other hand, any value $`0<\mathrm{\Gamma }<1`$ is physically admissible. The authors conclude that only in the regime $`d^2\mathrm{\Gamma }d`$ the current-phase relation becomes sinusoidal. In order to appreciate the deviation from sinusoidality, Fig. 2 shows the current as a function of the phase difference for $`d=0.001`$ and several values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.

For simplicity, we shall keep only two harmonics and take

$$I_{\mathrm{J}i}(\gamma _i)=I_{\mathrm{c}i}(\mathrm{sin}\gamma _i+\beta _i\mathrm{sin}2\gamma _i),$$
(4)
where $`I_{\mathrm{c}i}`$ and $`\beta _i`$ are constants that characterize the junction $`i`$. In order to present results that are clearly visible, most of our figures use the values $`\beta _1=\beta _2=0.7`$, but let me emphasize that the numerical investigation covered the range $`0|\beta _i|1`$ and the qualitative conclusions of the following section remain valid for small values of $`|\beta _i|`$.

In Ref. Zapata,  the second harmonic is brought in by connecting two junctions in series. It should be noted, though, that this method involves the implicit assumption that the same current flows through both “pure” junctions in series; this assumption is not acceptable in the context of this article, since the currents through both resistors fluctuate independently.

Using Eq. (4), the “potential” that describes the evolution of $`\gamma _i`$ becomes $`(\phi _x+\gamma _2\gamma _1)^2/2LI_{\mathrm{c1}}(\mathrm{cos}\gamma _1+\frac{1}{2}\beta _1\mathrm{cos}2\gamma _1)I_{\mathrm{c2}}(\mathrm{cos}\gamma _2+\frac{1}{2}\beta _2\mathrm{cos}2\gamma _2)`$. A contour graph of this potential is shown in Fig. 3 for a given set of parameters. The dark areas are minima, and the light areas are barriers between them. If the barriers are high, the values of $`\gamma _i`$ will be confined within a minimum, but, if the barriers are lowered, the noise will cause these values to diffuse, either to the right or to the left. Since the barrier at the left is closer than that at the right, the probability of crossing it is larger than that of crossing the barrier at the right. Therefore, if the barriers are raised again after a suitable time, the values of $`\gamma _i`$ may be pushed towards the consecutive minimum at the left, with a greater probability than that of being pushed to the right. In this way we may expect a non zero average drift of $`\gamma _1+\gamma _2`$; $`\gamma _1\gamma _2`$ remains always close to $`\phi _x`$.

We require a mechanism to vary the asymmetric potential of Fig. 3 in time. This is provided by fluctuations of $`I_{\mathrm{c1}}`$ and $`I_{\mathrm{c2}}`$. The maximum current through a junction is proportional to $`|\psi |^2`$, where $`\psi `$ is the order parameter. The evolution of $`\psi `$ can be described by the time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau theory with the addition of a Langevin “force”.Schmid  The “standard” terms drive $`\psi `$ towards equilibrium, whereas the Langevin term causes stochastic deviations from it. Since the Langevin term increases with the absolute temperature and the “standard” terms increase with the distance from the critical temperature, the influence of fluctuations is largest close to the critical temperature.

Due to the evolution of $`\psi `$, the evolution of $`I_{\mathrm{c}i}`$ should also have the form of a random walk, together with relaxation to the equilibrium value with some characteristic time $`\tau _i`$. The explicit implementation we took was

$$I_{\mathrm{c1}}(t+\mathrm{\Delta }t)=\frac{\tau _1\left[I_{\mathrm{c1}}(t)+(\delta _0r_0+\delta _1r_1)\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }t}\right]+\mathrm{\Delta }tI_{\mathrm{c0}}}{\tau _1+\mathrm{\Delta }t}$$
(5)
and, similarly, for $`I_{\mathrm{c2}}`$ the index 1 is replaced by 2, $`I_{\mathrm{c0}}`$ by $`\alpha I_{\mathrm{c0}}`$ and $`\delta _0`$ by $`\alpha \delta _0`$. Here $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ is the short period of time we have chosen, $`r_0`$, $`r_1`$ and $`r_2`$ are random numbers distributed between $`1`$ and $`1`$ and the $`\delta _i`$’s denote the strength of the fluctuations. If $`I_{\mathrm{c1}}`$ or $`I_{\mathrm{c2}}`$ becomes negative, it is reset to 0. $`\delta _0`$ describes synchronous fluctuations of both junctions, whereas $`\delta _{1,2}`$ describe independent fluctuations. If the coherence length is larger than the perimeter of the loop, as is the case for mesoscopic loops near the critical temperature, we may expect that $`\delta _0`$ will dominate, and vice versa.

If the $`\delta _i`$’s are very small, Eq. (5) reduces to exponential relaxation of $`I_{\mathrm{c}i}`$ to its equilibrium value, with time constant $`\tau _i`$; in the opposite extreme, if the relaxation time becomes infinite, we are left with pure random walk.

In order to reduce the number of parameters in the model we took $`\beta _1=\beta _2=\beta `$, $`\tau _1=\tau _2=\tau `$ and $`\delta _2=\alpha \delta _1`$. We are still left with quite a large number of parameters, but we shall see that several parameters have just a minor influence on the results; in addition, several parameters can be grouped, in the sense that varying any of them has qualitatively the same effect.

The relaxation times and the size of the random walk steps are related by the fluctuation–dissipation theorem. For example, let us consider the case that $`\delta _0=0`$ and the part of the energy of junction 1 that depends on $`I_{\mathrm{c1}}`$ has the form $`\kappa (I_{\mathrm{c1}}I_{\mathrm{c0}})^2`$. The constants $`\kappa `$ and $`I_{\mathrm{c0}}`$ could be obtained, for instance, from the Ginzburg–Landau theory; both depend on the fabrication details of the junction. In addition, $`I_{\mathrm{c0}}`$ should be proportional to the distance to the critical temperature and $`\kappa `$ should be independent of the temperature. Let $`F`$ be the “Langevin force” that acts on $`I_{\mathrm{c1}}`$. Then, by standard methods, we obtain $`_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}F(0)F(s)𝑑s=k_BT/\kappa \tau _1`$. From here, it can be obtained that the average of the square of the change of $`I_{\mathrm{c1}}`$ during the period $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ will be $`k_BT\mathrm{\Delta }t/\kappa \tau _1`$. It then follows that $`\tau _1\delta _1^2=2k_BT/\kappa `$. However, since $`\kappa `$ depends on the details of the juction, we will regard $`\tau `$ and the $`\delta _i`$’s as independent parameters.

The precise form of the fluctuations of $`I_{ci}`$ is not important. I have changed the distributions of the random numbers $`r_i`$ from uniform to Gaussian, to bimodal and to asymmetric (retaining the values of the average and the variance) and the difference in the results obtained from different distributions is not noticeably larger than the typical difference obtained for different runs with the same distribution. All that matters is how often and for how long the potential barriers in Fig. 3 are low compared to the noise level. The scattering in the results, though, seems to depend on the distribution used.

One might gain some intuition by comparing the orders of magnitude of the energies involved in the problem. Fluctuations in the electromagnetic field and in the order parameter are both of the order of $`k_BT`$; the energy required to break superconductivity ($`\kappa I_{\mathrm{c0}}^2`$) should be significantly, but not exceedingly, larger than $`k_BT`$. In this way, only when many random steps accumulate to diminish the order parameter, superconductivity is broken at a junction. For the parameters used here, $`I_{\mathrm{c}i}`$ typically vanished in one out of $`10^4`$ steps.

## III RESULTS

The equations above determine the evolution of the phase differences $`\gamma _{1,2}`$ for given sets of model parameters. This evolution was followed, using Euler iterations, during $`10^9`$ steps. The average voltages are then obtained by dividing the change of $`\gamma _{1,2}`$ by the elapsed time. In order to cancel out possible biases in the random numbers, we evaluated four sets of phase differences, which were obtained by reversing the sign of either $`\overline{I}_{\mathrm{N1}}`$ or $`\overline{I}_{\mathrm{N2}}`$ in Eq. (3), and then took the average of the voltages obtained for the four sets. The values obtained for $`V_1`$ and $`V_2`$ were nearly the same, and the reported voltage values are their averages.

Figure 4 shows our main result, obtained for a given set of parameters. In spite of the scattering in the results, it can be safely concluded that the dc voltage does not vanish, that it is a function of the flux, that it vanishes for integer and half-integer values of $`\mathrm{\Phi }/\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$, and has maxima in between.

I have studied the dependence of the voltage on each of the parameters of the model. This study has been limited to variations of a single parameter each time, with the others fixed at their values as in Fig. 4. For $`\delta _0`$, $`\tau `$ and $`\eta `$, the voltage is insignificant below some threshold, then rises to a maximum and decreases slowly. This is expected, because for low values of these parameters the phase differences have no opportunities to jump between consecutive minima of the “potential”, whereas for high values there are too many opportunities and thermal equilibrium is reached. Figure 5 shows the voltage as a function of $`\delta _0`$. Qualitatively, the same shape is obtained for quantities playing equivalent roles in diverse models, e.g. in Fig. 2 of Ref. charles, . As a function of $`\eta `$, the voltage attains half of its maximum value at $`\eta 0.3`$ and $`\eta 0.8`$. As a function of $`\tau `$, the voltage rises sharply to a maximum near $`\tau =2\times 10^4`$ and then decreases very slowly. The reason is that the typical distances of $`I_{\mathrm{c1}}`$ and $`I_{\mathrm{c2}}`$ from their equilibrium values are actually not proportional to $`\tau `$, but rather to its square root.

The dependence of the voltage on the other parameters is roughly as follows. It has a maximum close to $`\alpha 1.1`$ and decreases to half value for $`\alpha 1/3`$ and $`\alpha 4`$. It is insensitive to $`C`$ for $`C1`$ and decreases to half value for $`C10^3`$. It is also insensitive to $`L`$ for $`L1`$ and decreases to half value for $`L12`$. For $`0|\beta |1`$ the voltage is roughly proportional to $`\beta +0.25\beta ^3`$ and, for $`\delta _10.03`$, to $`e^{80\delta _1}`$.

In principle, the results should not depend on $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, but in practice the steps cannot be too large if the derivatives of $`\gamma _i`$ and $`V_i`$ are approximated by ratios of discrete differences; $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ also cannot be too small, since then too many steps are required until $`I_{\mathrm{c1},2}`$ become small a statistically significant number of times. In our calculations we took $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=0.01`$. In order to estimate the accuracy of our results, we repeated some calculations for $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=0.1`$. The voltages obtained were lower by about 20%.

An important difference between our model and other flashing ratchets is that here the variations of $`I_{\mathrm{c}i}`$ in time are themselves due to spontaneous fluctuations, and it is not obvious who is the agent that invests the work required for rectification. Some models have been studied in which rectification is performed by fluctuations,charles ; bio  but those are manifestly nonequilibrium fluctuations, whereas our heuristic considerations suggest that in the present case rectification is not subject to any detailed form of $`\overline{I}_N`$ or of the fluctuations of $`I_{\mathrm{c}i}`$, so that the question remains open.

## IV APPLICATION TO EXISTENT EXPERIMENT

Recent measurements on mesoscopic rings composed by segments of unequal widths, near the critical temperature,nikul  found a dc voltage with apparently the same flux-dependence as in our Fig. 4. Thus far we have not explained their results, since the voltages we have found are smaller than $`I_{\mathrm{c0}}R_1`$ by four orders of magnitude, whereas the experimental results are smaller than the corresponding product by only one order of magnitude (provided that we identify $`R_i`$ with the resistance of a segment in its normal state and $`I_{\mathrm{c}i}`$ with the maximum supercurrent that can flow in it).

Nevertheless, bearing in mind the differences between the experiment and our model, the very existence of a non zero flux-dependent dc voltage in our case is already remarkable. The experiment differs from our model in two essential respects. The first difference is that their rings contain only two segments, without the strongly superconducting branches (see Fig. 1). Conceivably, by assuming that $`I_{\mathrm{J}i}`$ depends only on $`\gamma _i`$ and by assuming that fluctuations affect the size of $`I_{\mathrm{J}i}`$ only (with the shape of the functions remaining invariant), essential features of the ring behavior are lost.

The second difference between the experiment and our model is that the experiment used an external ac current $`I_x(t)`$ to destroy superconductivity. This feature is readily incorporated into our model. Assuming that both segments give equal contributions to the self inductance of the ring, all we have to do is add $`I_x(t)/2`$ at the right hand side of Eq. (2). By adding this term, our system becomes a rocked ratchet.omega ; Mag

Figure 6 shows the dc voltages obtained for our model with an external current of the form $`I_x(t)=I_{x0}\mathrm{sin}(\omega t)`$. Some of the parameters used to evaluate these results ($`\alpha `$, $`C`$, $`L`$) were estimated from the available experimental data; the remaining parameters are arbitrary. The results bear close resemblance to those obtained for other periodically rocked ratchets:Weiss ; omega  for rocking periods $`2\pi /\omega `$ that are larger by two or more orders of magnitude than the characteristic time $`\mathrm{}/2eI_{\mathrm{c0}}R_1`$ of the circuit, we obtain the upper curve, independently of $`\omega `$. However, for periods that are comparable to $`\mathrm{}/2eI_{\mathrm{c0}}R_1`$, we find that there is a nearly periodic pattern of rocking strengths for which the rectifying effect is present.

In the experiment, $`\mathrm{}/2eI_{\mathrm{c0}}R_110^{11}`$s, whereas the shortest period of the applied ac current was $`10^6`$s. The relevant curve is therefore the upper one. Indeed, the experiment found that the frequency of the ac current has no influence. The upper curve in Fig. 6 is remarkably similar to Fig. 6 in Ref. nikul, , and this time the orders of magnitude coincide (for the voltages, and also for the currents).

The heuristic argument used in Fig. 3 to predict the existence of a dc voltage is not applicable now: in the presence of a large external current, the sign of the voltage is opposite to what that argument would predict.

Even in the presence of an external current, the noise and the supercurrent fluctuations play a central role. For $`I_{x0}=4`$ and the other parameters as in the upper curve of Fig. 6, setting $`\eta =\delta _0=0`$ leads to a voltage decrease by one order of magnitude; for $`I_{x0}2.1`$, the voltage vanishes when we set $`\eta =\delta _0=0`$.

The experimental temperature is related to the parameters in our model through the values of $`I_{\mathrm{c0}}`$. The typical deviation of $`I_{\mathrm{c}i}`$ from its equilibrium value is of the order of $`\delta _i\tau ^{1/2}(k_BT/\kappa )^{1/2}`$. A significant response is obtained when $`I_{\mathrm{c0}}`$ is larger than—but comparable to—this typical deviation, i.e., for temperatures slightly below the onset of superconductivity, as in this experiment.

Let us finally discuss two additional experiments in which nonuniform superconducting loops lead to a flux dependent dc voltage. Long ago de Waele et al.Bruyn  measured dc voltage on a double point contact SQUID. The asymmetry was not in the weak links, as in the present article, but rather in the thick parts of the loop: one part was a niobium foil and the other a tin needle. No controlled driving ac current was supplied to the circuit; apparently, the role of the ac current was substituted by existing electromagnetic radiation in the lab. When the circuit was appropriately shielded, the dc voltage was no longer measurable. As in the cases considered here, the highest dc voltage was found when the temperature was slightly lower than the critical temperature of the weaker superconducting material (Sn). The highest dc voltage was comparable to the product of the maximal current through a point contact times its normal resistance.

Weiss et al.Weiss  measured rectification by an YBCO SQUID for a wide range of applied frequencies (ac and rf). The asymmetry was mainly due to different maximal currents of the junctions; this asymmetry leads to a rocking ratchet. Their ac results, shown in their Fig. 5(a) are remarkably similar to the upper curve in our Fig. 6, including orders of magnitude. In later experimentsapplied  the same group studied the influence of temperature and repeated the experiment for a niobium circuit. However, all the temperatures were considerably below the critical temperature, so that only variations in our parameter $`\eta `$ were significant, while the fluctuations of $`I_{\mathrm{c}i}`$ had no noticeable influence. In addition, they used tunnel junctions, so that our $`\beta `$ is also expected to vanish.

In view of the differences among the reviewed experimental loops and our “zero-dimensional” model, their similar behavior is remarkable and suggests that the features encountered in our results will be present in any sort of nonuniform superconducting loop near its transition temperature.

## V SUMMARY

Superconductors near their transition temperature may be regarded as a special class of thermal ratchets, in the sense that the fluctuations of its order parameter can act as a flashing asymmetric “potential” and thus rectify the Johnson noise. We have found a simple model that qualitatively reproduces the experimental results of Ref. nikul, . For applied frequencies that are comparable to the “natural” frequency of the circuit, a complex pattern is predicted. In the absence of external current, the voltage decreases by about three orders of magnitude and may change sign, but our simulations and our heuristic considerations indicate that it does not vanish.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work has been supported in part by the Israel Science Foundation. I wish to thank Konstantin Likharev and Howard Wiseman for their answers to my inquiries. I am also indebted to Peter Hänggi and Jacob Rubinstein for reading early versions of the manuscript.