QDev Seminar: Antonio Fornieri

NEST, Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR and Scuola Normale Superiore, I-56127 Pisa, Italy

Coherent manipulation of electronic heat currents in superconducting quantum circuits

The emerging field of coherent caloritronics [1,2] is based on the possibility to manipulate the phase-coherent heat currents flowing in mesoscopic superconducting structures. The goal is to design and implement quantum technologies able to master energy transfer with the same degree of accuracy reached for charge transport in contemporary electronic devices. This can be obtained by exploiting the macroscopic quantum coherence of the superconducting condensate, which manifests itself through the Josephson effect.

In this presentation, I will report recent experimental results obtained in the realization of heat interferometers [1,3,4] and thermal rectifiers [5], and discuss the main theoretical proposals for exotic non-linear caloritronic devices, such as thermal transistors and solid-state memories [6]. Besides being extremely attractive from the fundamental physics point of view, these systems would have a great impact on many fields of nanoscience, such as solid state cooling, energy harvesting, thermal isolation, cryogenic radiation detection and quantum information.

[1] F. Giazotto and M. J. Martínez-Pérez, Nature 492, 401–405 (2012).

[2] M. J. Martínez-Pérez, P. Solinas, F. Giazotto, J. Low Temp. Phys. 175, 813–837 (2014).

[3] A. Fornieri, C. Blanc, R. Bosisio, S. D’Ambrosio, F. Giazotto, Nature Nanotechn. 11, 258–262 (2016).

[4] A. Fornieri, G. Timossi, P. Virtanen, P. Solinas, F. Giazotto, arXiv:1607.02428.

[5] M. J. Martínez-Pérez, A. Fornieri, F. Giazotto, Nature Nanotechn. 10, 303–307 (2015).

[6] A. Fornieri, G. Timossi, R. Bosisio, P. Solinas, F. Giazotto, Phys. Rev. B 93, 134508 (2016).