News

February 2023

Congratulations to Pierre Février, Phd student in our group for his publication in Communications Physics about the Role of optical rectification in photon-assisted tunneling current.

“Emission of light and conversely rectification of an optical signal using an all-metallic electronic device is of fundamental and technological importance for nano-optics. However despite recent experimental efforts in the development of electrically-driven plasmonic sources, the interplay between quantum transport and optics is still under debate. Here, we measure the photon-assisted current in a planar tunnel junction under infrared illumination. To address the microscopic mechanism at the origin of the optical rectification, we compare the photon-assisted current and the current-voltage characteristic of the junction measured on a voltage range much greater than V0=hceλ=0.825V, previously unexplored. The experimental results do not agree with the theory based on the existence of a non-thermal distribution function corresponding to the exchange of energy quanta between electrons and photons. We show instead that the illumination power mainly goes into heating and that the rectification results from the tunneling Seebeck effect.”

November 2022

Congratulations to Gianluca Aiello, Phd student in our group for his publication in Nature communications about Quantum bath engineering of a high impedance microwave mode through quasiparticle tunneling.

“In microwave quantum optics, dissipation usually corresponds to quantum jumps, where photons are lost one by one. Here we demonstrate a new approach to dissipation engineering. By coupling a high impedance microwave resonator to a tunnel junction, we use the photoassisted tunneling of quasiparticles as a tunable dissipative process. We are able to adjust the minimum number of lost photons per tunneling event to be one, two or more, through a dc voltage. Consequently, different Fock states of the resonator experience different loss processes. Causality then implies that each state experiences a different energy (Lamb) shift, as confirmed experimentally. This photoassisted tunneling process is analogous to a photoelectric effect, which requires a quantum description of light to be quantitatively understood. This work opens up new possibilities for quantum state manipulation in superconducting circuits, which do not rely on the Josephson effect.”

June 2021

Congratulations to Charis Quay, University Lecturer in the group, who has been nominated to the prestigious Institut Universitaire de France .

May 2021
Congratulations to Freek Massee, CNRS researcher in the group, who has been awarded the CNRS Bronze medal for his work on noise measurements at the atomic scale. See the related articles here.

February 2021
The paper by Freek Massee and collaborators on high speed atomic rotors in Bi2Se3 has appeared in ACS Nano.

November 2020
Ognjen Stanisavljevic has joined the group as a phd student to work on single microwave photon detection.

August 2020
The paper by Marko Kuzmanovic and collaborators on spin energy modes in mesoscopic superconductors has appeared in Nature communications.

August 2020
A news and views article has appeared regarding our published work on the dynamics of strongly driven Josephson junctions.

February 2020
A news and views article has appeared regarding our published work on manipulating the superconducting gap at atomic scale.

January 2020
The paper by Freek Massee and collaborators on tuning the superconducting gap of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x by manipulating atoms has appeared in Science .

January 2020
Umamahesh Thupakula has started a post-doc to work with our STM.

September 2019
Alexandra Palacio Morales has joined the group as an Assistant Professor.

July 2019
A news and views article has appeared regarding our published work on high kinetic inductance W nanowires.

June 2019
The french version of the smartphone application Phyphox has been released. The translation was driven by Frédéric Bouquet (Université Paris Sud), Ulysse Delabre (Université de Toulouse) and Julien Basset, assistant professor in the group.

November 2017
Cyril Vaneph has successfully defended his thesis.

October 2017
Freek Massee has started as a ‘Chargé de Recherche’ with the CNRS. He remains in the group.

June 2017
Aymeric Courilleau and Baptiste Jost have joined us as interns.

April 2017
Félicien Appas has joined us as an intern.

March 2017
Charis Quay has been awarded a Bronze Medal by the CNRS.

January 2017
Pierre Février has successfully defended his thesis.September 2016
Marko Kuzmanović and Gianluca Aiello have joined the group as PhD students.

June 2016
Nikhita Baladari has joined us as an intern.

May 2016
Faten Ben Chaabane, Alexander Noddings and Mohamed Ouerfelli have joined us as interns.

March 2016
Marko Kuzmanović has returned to the group as an intern.

February 2016
Bi Yi Wu is visiting from the National Taiwan University for six months.

October 2015
Mathieu Féchant has started his PhD in the group.

September 2015
Alexis Morvan has started his PhD and Gianluca Aiello has joined as an intern.

July 2015
Julien Basset and his colleagues at ETH Zurich published in PRL.

June 2015
Pierre Chevalier and Clément Leroy have joined as interns.

May 2015
Charles Rigoudy has joined as an intern.

April 2015 Our work on spin resonance of quasiparticles in superconducting aluminium has been published in Nature Communications.

February 2015
Freek Massee has joined the group as a postodoc.

January 2015
Cyril Vaneph has joined as a PhD student. Alexis Morvan and Mathieu Féchant have joined as interns.

October 2014
Jérôme Estève has joined the group. Marko Kuzmanović has joined as an intern.

September 2014
Julien Basset has joined the group. Maximilian Weideneder will be spending the academic year with us as part of his diplomarbeit. Tom Dvir is visiting us and the Mesoscopic Physics group for a few weeks.

August 2014
Our work on the spin (imbalance) lifetime in a superconductor in the frequency domain is published. Experiment, Theory.

May 2014
Yann Chiffaudel has joined as an intern. Christoph Strunk is visiting the group.

April 2014
Jordan Bouaziz has joined as an intern.

January 2014
Tito Williams has joined as a visitor.

November 2013
Our work on a third-order correlator of the electromagnetic field is published in New Journal of Physics, arXiv.

October 2013
Pierre Février has started his PhD in the group.

February 2013
We have shown that it is possible to control the shot noise across a tunnel junction using high-frequency ‘biharmonic illumination’ arXiv, Nature Physics.

January 2013
Baydir Bouali and Pierre Février have joined as interns, Edouard Pinsolle as a postdoc.

August 2012
We have shown that it is possible to have spin imbalance but not charge imbalance (and vice versa) arXiv, Nature Physics, News and Views.

July 2012
Marco Aprili will be on sabbatical this coming academic year at Cornell University.

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