Fully superconducting Bloch-oscillating transistor: Amplification and bifurcation based on Bloch oscillations and counterflowing Cooper pairs

Abstract: The Bloch-oscillating transistor (BOT) is an amplifier that utilizes semiclassical dynamics of states in energy bands under traveling quasimomentum. In a BOT, a single quasiparticle tunneling across a base tunnel junction switches the state of a superconducting tunnel junction to a lower Bloch band, triggering a series of resonant Cooper-pair tunnelings through an emitter Josephson junction (Bloch oscillations). Here, we investigate experimentally and theoretically an alternative realization of this device, based only on superconducting tunnel junctions. We discover new amplification schemes, where the periodic motion of the quasimomentum is used to control charge transport between the electrodes. Remarkable, in operation the resonant Cooper-pair transport across the base Josephson junction occurs repeatedly to two opposite directions.