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Synthetic fractional flux quanta in a ring of superconducting qubits

Luca Chirolli1,*, Juan Polo1, Gianluigi Catelani1,2, and Luigi Amico1,3,4

  • *Contact author: luca.chirolli@unifi.it
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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043098 – Published 24 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/d3rk-kh1k

Abstract

A ring of capacitively coupled transmons threaded by a synthetic magnetic field is studied as a realization of a strongly interacting bosonic system. The synthetic flux is imparted through a specific Floquet modulation scheme based on a suitable periodic sequence of Lorentzian pulses that are known as “Levitons.” Such scheme has the advantage to preserve the translation invariance of the system and to work at the qubit sweet spots. We employ this system to demonstrate the concept of fractional values of flux quanta. Although such fractionalization phenomenon was originally predicted for bright solitons in cold atoms, it may be in fact challenging to access with that platform. Here, we show how fractional flux quanta can be read out in the absorption spectrum of a suitable “scattering experiment” in which the qubit ring is driven by microwaves.

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043098– Published 24 October, 2025
  • Received 5 October 2024
  • Accepted 11 September 2025
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