The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation offers a unique window into the early Universe, facilitating precise examinations of fundamental cosmological theories. However, the quest for detecting B-modes in the CMB, predicted by theoretical models of inflation, faces substantial challenges in terms of calibration and foreground modeling. The COSMOCal (COsmic Survey of Millimeter wavelengths Objects for CMB experiments Calibration) project aims at enhancing the accuracy of the absolute calibration of the polarization angle $\psi$ of current and future CMB experiments. The concept includes the build of a very well known artificial source emitting in the frequency range [20-350] GHz that would act as an absolute calibrator for several polarization facilities on Earth. A feasibility study to place the artificial source in geostationary orbit, in the far field for all the telescopes on Earth, is ongoing. In the meanwhile ongoing hardware work is dedicated to build a prototype to test the technology, the precision and the stability of the polarization recovering in the 1 mm band (220-300 GHz). High-resolution experiments as the NIKA2 camera at the IRAM 30m telescope will be deployed for such use. Once carefully calibrated ($\Delta\psi$ < 0.1 degrees) it will be used to observe astrophysical sources such as the Crab nebula, which is the best candidate in the sky for the absolute calibration of CMB experiments.

Context. The cosmic microwave background (CMB), a remnant of the Big Bang, provides unparalleled insights into the primordial universe, its energy content, and the origin of cosmic structures. The success of forthcoming terrestrial and space experiments hinges on meticulously calibrated data. Specifically, the ability to achieve an absolute calibration of the polarization angles with a precision of <0 degrees. 1 is crucial to identify the signatures of primordial gravitational waves and cosmic birefringence within the CMB polarization. Aims. We introduce the COSmological Microwave Observations Calibrator project, designed to deploy a polarized source in space for calibrating microwave frequency observations. The project aims to integrate microwave polarization observations from small and large telescopes, ground-based and in space, into a unified scale, enhancing the effectiveness of each observatory and allowing robust combination of data. Methods. To demonstrate the feasibility and confirm the observational approach of our project, we developed a prototype instrument that operates in the atmospheric window centered at 260 GHz, specifically tailored for use with the NIKA2 camera at the IRAM 30 m telescope. Results. We present the instrument components and their laboratory characterization. The results of tests performed with the fully assembled prototype using a Kinetic Inductance Detectors-based instrument, similar concept of NIKA2, are also reported. Conclusions. This study paves the way for an observing campaign using the IRAM 30 m telescope and contributes to the development of a space-based instrument.

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation offers a unique window into the early Universe, facilitating precise examinations of fundamental cosmological theories. However, the quest for detecting B-modes in the CMB, predicted by theoretical models of inflation, faces substantial challenges in terms of calibration and foreground modeling. The COSMOCal (COsmic Survey of Millimeter wavelengths Objects for CMB experiments Calibration) project aims at enhancing the accuracy of the absolute calibration of the polarization angle ψ of current and future CMB experiments. The concept includes the build of a very well known artificial source emitting in the frequency range [20-350] GHz that would act as an absolute calibrator for several polarization facilities on Earth. A feasibility study to place the artificial source in geostationary orbit, in the far field for all the telescopes on Earth, is ongoing. In the meanwhile ongoing hardware work is dedicated to build a prototype to test the technology, the precision and the stability of the polarization recovering in the 1 mm band (220-300 GHz). High-resolution experiments as the NIKA2 camera at the IRAM 30m telescope will be deployed for such use. Once carefully calibrated (Δψ < 0.1◦) it will be used to observe astrophysical sources such as the Crab nebula, which is the best candidate in the sky for the absolute calibration of CMB experiments.

Electroluminescence, a non-thermal radiative process, is ubiquitous in semi-conductors and insulators but fundamentally precluded in metals. We show here that this restriction can be circumvented in high-quality graphene. By investigating the radiative emission of semi-metallic graphene field-effect transistors over a broad spectral range, spanning the near- and mid-infrared, we demonstrate direct far-field electroluminescence from hBN-encapsulated graphene in the mid-infrared under large bias in ambient conditions. Through a series of test experiments ruling out its incandescence origin, we determine that the electroluminescent signal results from the electrical pumping produced by interband tunneling. We show that the mid-infrared electroluminescence is spectrally shaped by a natural quarter-wave resonance of the heterostructure. This work invites a reassessment of the use of metals and semi-metals as non-equilibrium light emitters, and the exploration of their intriguing specificities in terms of carrier injection and relaxation, as well as emission tunability and switching speed.

Current implementations of quantum bits (qubits) continue to undergo too many errors to be scaled into useful quantum machines. An emerging strategy is to encode quantum information in the two meta-stable pointer states of an oscillator exchanging pairs of photons with its environment, a mechanism shown to provide stability without inducing decoherence. Adding photons in these states increases their separation, and macroscopic bit-flip times are expected even for a handful of photons, a range suitable to implement a qubit. However, previous experimental realizations have saturated in the millisecond range. In this work, we aim for the maximum bit-flip time we could achieve in a two-photon dissipative oscillator. To this end, we design a Josephson circuit in a regime that circumvents all suspected dynamical instabilities, and employ a minimally invasive fluorescence detection tool, at the cost of a two-photon exchange rate dominated by single-photon loss. We attain bit-flip times of the order of 100 seconds for states pinned by two-photon dissipation and containing about 40 photons. This experiment lays a solid foundation from which the two-photon exchange rate can be gradually increased, thus gaining access to the preparation and measurement of quantum superposition states, and pursuing the route towards a logical qubit with built-in bit-flip protection.

Spectroscopy in the visible and near-infrared has been the main tool for characterising the surface properties of asteroids for decades. For a given target, the two wavelength regimes are usually acquired by different telescopes/instruments, separated by years. They are seldom obtained simultaneously. However, it is not straightforward to combine datasets from different sources because of the spectral reddening linked with phase angle. We present the first-light result of SOVAG (Spectrographe pour l’Observations dans le Visible et infrarouge proche d’Astéroïdes Géocroiseurs), a new concept of spectrograph for observing both wavelength ranges at the same time. It is compact in design and portable. We developed a prototype of this instrument between 2016 and 2018. In July 2018, we mounted SOVAG on the 1 m-telescope in Pic du Midi observatory (for which it was designed) and conducted its on-sky first light experiment. We present a spectrum of (4) Vesta which demonstrates the reliability of observations and the accuracy of the calibration. Ongoing development will allow us to push observation-limits toward fainter objects.

The paradigm of graphene transistors is based on the gate modulation of the channel carrier density by means of a local channel gate. This standard architecture is subject to the scaling limit of the channel length and further restrictions due to access and contact resistances impeding the device performance. We propose a novel design, overcoming these issues by implementing additional local gates underneath the contact region which allow a full control of the Klein barrier taking place at the contact edge. In particular, our work demonstrates the GHz operation of transistors driven by independent contact gates. We benchmark the standard channel and novel contact gating and report for the later dynamical transconductance levels at the state of the art. Our finding may find applications in electronics and optoelectronics whenever there is need to control independently the Fermi level and the electrostatic potential of electronic sources or to get rid of cumbersome local channel gates.

We report on electron cooling power measurements in few-layer graphene excited by Joule heating by means of a new setup combining electrical and optical probes of the electron and phonon baths temperatures. At low bias, noise thermometry allows us to retrieve the well known acoustic phonon cooling regimes below and above the Bloch-Grüneisen temperature, with additional control over the phonon bath temperature. At high electrical bias, we show the relevance of direct optical investigation of the electronic temperature by means of black-body radiation measurements. In this regime, the onset of new efficient relaxation pathways involving optical modes is observed.

J. Chaste, 2 L. Lechner, P. Morfin, 2 G. Fève, 2 T. Kontos, 2 J.-M. Berroir, D.C. Glattli, 2, 4 H. Happy, P. Hakonen, and B. Plaçais 2, ∗ Ecole Normale Supérieure, Laboratoire Pierre Aigrain, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France CNRS UMR8551, Laboratoire associé aux universités Pierre et Marie Curie et Denis Diderot, France Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, Otakaari 3A, Espoo, 02015 Finland Service de Physique de l’Etat Condensé, CEA Saclay, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France Institut d’Electronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie, UMR-CNRS 8520, BP 60069, Avenue Poincaré, 59652, Villeneuve d’Asq, France (Dated: May 10, 2014)

Making a system state follow a prescribed trajectory despite fluctuations and errors commonly consists of monitoring an observable (temperature, blood-glucose level, etc.) and reacting on its controllers (heater power, insulin amount, etc.). In the quantum domain, there is a change of paradigm in feedback, since measurements modify the state of the system, most dramatically when the trajectory goes through superpositions of measurement eigenstates. Here, we demonstrate the stabilization of an arbitrary trajectory of a superconducting qubit by measurement-based feedback. The protocol benefits from the long coherence time (T2 > 10 s) of the 3D transmon qubit, the high efficiency (82%) of the phasepreserving Josephson amplifier, and fast electronics that ensure less than 500 ns total delay. At discrete time intervals, the state of the qubit is measured and corrected in case an error is detected. For Rabi oscillations, where the discrete measurements occur when the qubit is supposed to be in the measurement pointer states, we demonstrate an average fidelity of 85% to the targeted trajectory. For Ramsey oscillations, which do not go through pointer states, the average fidelity reaches 76%. Incidentally, we demonstrate a fast reset protocol that allows us to cool a 3D transmon qubit down to 0:6% in the excited state.

We present the first experimental realization of a widely frequency tunable, nondegenerate three-wave mixing device for quantum signals at gigahertz frequency. It is based on a new superconducting building block consisting of a ring of four Josephson junctions shunted by a cross of four linear inductances. The phase configuration of the ring remains unique over a wide range of magnetic fluxes threading the loop. It is thus possible to vary the inductance of the ring with flux while retaining a strong, dissipation-free, and noiseless nonlinearity. The device has been operated in amplifier mode, and its noise performance has been evaluated by using the noise spectrum emitted by a voltage-biased tunnel junction at finite frequency as a test signal. The unprecedented accuracy with which the crossover between zero-point fluctuations and shot noise has been measured provides an upper bound for the noise and dissipation intrinsic to the device.

The high-frequency transconductance and current noise of top-gated single carbon nanotube transistors have been measured and used to investigate hot electron effects in one-dimensional transistors. Results are in good agreement with a theory of 1-dimensional nano-transistor. In particular the prediction of a large transconductance correction to the Johnson-Nyquist thermal noise formula is confirmed experimentally. Experiment shows that nanotube transistors can be used as fast charge detectors for quantum coherent electronics with a resolution of $13\mathrm{\mu e/\sqrt{Hz}}$ in the 0.2-$0.8 \mathrm{GHz}$ band.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are not intrinsically superconducting but they can carry a supercurrent when connected to superconducting electrodes. This supercurrent is mainly transmitted by discrete entangled electron-hole states confined to the nanotube, called Andreev Bound States (ABS). These states are a key concept in mesoscopic superconductivity as they provide a universal description of Josephson-like effects in quantum-coherent nanostructures (e.g. molecules, nanowires, magnetic or normal metallic layers) connected to superconducting leads. We report here the first tunneling spectroscopy of individually resolved ABS, in a nanotube-superconductor device. Analyzing the evolution of the ABS spectrum with a gate voltage, we show that the ABS arise from the discrete electronic levels of the molecule and that they reveal detailed information about the energies of these levels, their relative spin orientation and the coupling to the leads. Such measurements hence constitute a powerful new spectroscopic technique capable of elucidating the electronic structure of CNT-based devices, including those with well-coupled leads. This is relevant for conventional applications (e.g. superconducting or normal transistors, SQUIDs) and quantum information processing (e.g. entangled electron pairs generation, ABS-based qubits). Finally, our device is a new type of dc-measurable SQUID.

We report on spin-dependent transport measurements in carbon nanotubes based multiterminal circuits. We observe a gate-controlled spin signal in nonlocal voltages and an anomalous conductance spin signal, which reveal that both the spin and the orbital phase can be conserved along carbon nanotubes with multiple ferromagnetic contacts. This paves the way for spintronics devices exploiting both these quantum-mechanical degrees of freedom on the same footing.

Sensitive measurements of fluctuations in the current through carbon-nanotube-based quantum dots provide insight into the many-body physics of such systems. In the original discussion of the Kondo effect, the increase of the resistance in an alloy such as Cu0.998Fe0.002 at low temperature was explained by the antiferromagnetic coupling between a magnetic impurity and the spin of the host’s conduction electrons1. This coupling has since emerged as a very generic property of localized electronic states coupled to a continuum2,3,4,5,6,7. Recently, the possibility to design artificial magnetic impurities in nanoscale conductors has opened avenues to the study of this many-body phenomenon in a controlled way and, in particular, in out-of-equilibrium situations8,9,10. So far though, measurements have focused on the average current. Current fluctuations (noise) on the other hand are a sensitive probe that contains detailed information about electronic transport. Here, we report on noise measurements in artificial Kondo impurities realized in carbon-nanotube devices. We find a striking enhancement of the current noise within the Kondo resonance, in contradiction with simple non-interacting theories. Our findings provide a sensitive test bench for one of the most important many-body theories of condensed matter in out-of-equilibrium situations and shed light on the noise properties of highly conductive molecular devices.

We report on microwave operation of top-gated single carbon nanotube transistors. From transmission measurements in the 0.1-1.6 GHz range, we deduce device transconductance gm and gate-nanotube capacitance Cg of micro- and nanometric devices. A large and frequency-independent gm approximately 20 microS is observed on short devices, which meets the best dc results. The capacitance per unit gate length of 60 aF/microm is typical of top gates on a conventional oxide with epsilon approximately 10. This value is a factor of 3-5 below the nanotube quantum capacitance which, according to recent simulations, favors high transit frequencies fT=gm/2piCg. For our smallest devices, we find a large fT approximately 50 GHz with no evidence of saturation in length dependence.

We report on shot noise measurements in carbon nanotube based Fabry-Perot electronic interferometers. As a consequence of quantum interference, the noise power spectral density oscillates as a function of the voltage applied to the gate electrode. The quantum shot noise theory accounts for the data quantitatively and allows us to determine directly the transmissions of the two channels characterizing the nanotube. In the weak backscattering regime, the dependence of the noise on the backscattering current is found weaker than expected, pointing either to electron-electron interactions or to weak decoherence.