Resonant tunneling through a macroscopic charge state in a superconducting SET transistor

Abstract

We predict theoretically and observe in experiment that the differential conductance of a superconducting SET transistor exhibits a peak which is a complete analogue in a macroscopic system of a standard resonant tunneling peak associated with tunneling through a single quantum state. In particular, in a symmetric transistor, the peak height is universal and equal to $e^2/2\pi \hbar$. Away from the resonance we clearly observe the co-tunneling current which in contrast to the normal-metal transistor varies linearly with the bias voltage.