Collapse and Inversion of the Josephson Potential in a Strongly Driven Superconducting Circuit
Abstract
Superconducting circuits embedding Josephson junctions leverage microwave drives for control and measurement of quantum states. Although increasing the drive power is desirable for improving the efficiency of these operations, it eventually triggers unwanted transitions to uncontrolled states. While careful choice of circuit symmetries and parameters can mitigate these effects, the presence of spurious circuit modes spoils the resilience to high power. In this work, we engineer a transmon-resonator system free of any detrimental unwanted transitions. This resilience enables us to access drive powers at which we uncover a remarkable physical phenomenon: the collapse and inversion of the Josephson potential. Through spectroscopy and readout experiments, we confirm that the driven potential goes to zero and inverts as the power increases. The inversion corresponds to the dynamical stabilization of the transmon at its unstable equilibrium point, directly analogous to an inverted pendulum. This result reveals a new limitation of strongly driven superconducting circuits beyond drive-induced transitions. In addition, the dynamical renormalization of the Josephson potential opens up novel avenues for the control of superconducting circuits, and the autonomous stabilization of noise-resilient quantum states.
Related
- Singlet-doublet transitions and Josephson currents in a superconducting ring with a quantum dot
- Superconducting Diode Effect in Josephson φ0 Junction
- The Superconducting Talbot Effect in Phased-Array Josephson Junctions
- Superconducting Diode Effect due to the Inverse Spin Hall Effect in Josephson Junctions with Extrinsic Spin-Orbit Interaction
- Direct real-space imaging of sign-reversal superconducting state by scanning Josephson tunneling
BibTeX
@misc{deve2026collapse,
title = {{Collapse and Inversion of the Josephson Potential in a Strongly Driven Superconducting Circuit}},
author = {Sercan Deve and Marius Villiers and Marijn A. Morssink and Robin C. Dekker and Gary A. Steele},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.14344},
eprint = {2607.14344},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.14344},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Collapse and Inversion of the Josephson Potential in a Strongly Driven Superconducting Circuit
AU - Sercan Deve
AU - Marius Villiers
AU - Marijn A. Morssink
AU - Robin C. Dekker
AU - Gary A. Steele
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.14344
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.14344
AB - Superconducting circuits embedding Josephson junctions leverage microwave drives for control and measurement of quantum states. Although increasing the drive power is desirable for improving the efficiency of these operations, it eventually triggers unwanted transitions to uncontrolled states. While careful choice of circuit symmetries and parameters can mitigate these effects, the presence of spurious circuit modes spoils the resilience to high power. In this work, we engineer a transmon-resonator system free of any detrimental unwanted transitions. This resilience enables us to access drive powers at which we uncover a remarkable physical phenomenon: the collapse and inversion of the Josephson potential. Through spectroscopy and readout experiments, we confirm that the driven potential goes to zero and inverts as the power increases. The inversion corresponds to the dynamical stabilization of the transmon at its unstable equilibrium point, directly analogous to an inverted pendulum. This result reveals a new limitation of strongly driven superconducting circuits beyond drive-induced transitions. In addition, the dynamical renormalization of the Josephson potential opens up novel avenues for the control of superconducting circuits, and the autonomous stabilization of noise-resilient quantum states.
ER -