Cooper pair sluice: A fast and accurate single-island charge pump

We have carried out first measurements on a novel type of a charge pump nicknamed the Cooper pair "sluice". The device is an adiabatic flux-assisted Cooper pair pump consisting of a mesoscopic superconducting island and of two SQUID loops. The operation is based on the periodic manipulation of a single voltage gate and two input coils controlling the magnetic flux through the SQUID loops. Based on theoretical estimates the device is capable of producing as high as 0.1 nA currents at better than 10^- accuracy and looks thus like a promising candidate for the current source in completing the quantum measurement triangle. In spite of several nonidealities in our preliminary measurement setup, we have succeeded in verifying the pumping behavior of the sluice. The pumped currents were quite high, several hundred pA, but the accuracy needs to be increased. The results obtained so far suggest various ways of improving the measurement setup