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The phenomenon of macroscopic quantum tunneling (MQT) has gained renewed interest in the last years as a very efficient and sensitive measurement process in superconducting mesoscopic circuits. In this talk I will discuss two situations: (i) the read-out of quantum states in Cooper pair boxes via Josephson junctions [1,2] and (ii) the detection of non-Gaussian electrical noise [3]. In the first case Landau-Zener transitions during barrier tunneling can be understood as MQT processes of fictitious spin-1/2 particles. In the second case, the standard theory for dissipative MQT must be generalized to non-Gaussian influence functionals.
[1] J. Ankerhold et al, PRL 016803 [2] G. Ithier et al., PRL 029901 [3] J. Ankerhold et al., PRL 186601 |
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