Superconducting resonator parametric amplifiers with intrinsic separation of pump and signal tones

Abstract

Superconducting resonator parametric amplifiers achieve ultra-low-noise amplification through the nonlinear kinetic inductance of thin-film superconductors. One of the main challenges to the operation of these devices is the separation of the strong pump tone from the signal tone after amplification has been achieved. In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a pump separation method based on operating a half-wave superconducting resonator amplifier behind a cryogenic circulator. Our pump separation scheme does not involve post-amplification interference, and thereby avoids the delicate phase matching of two different pump paths. We demonstrate the scheme using two-port half-wave resonator amplifiers based on superconducting NbN thin-films. We present measurements of gain profiles and degrees of pump separation for amplifiers having different coupling quality factors. On an amplifier having a coupling quality factor of $\sim 2000$, we measured a peak signal gain of $15\mathrm{dB}$ whilst achieving pump separation of $12\mathrm{dB}$. The amplifier was stable for continuous measurements, and the gain drift was measured to be $0.15\mathrm{dB}$ over an hour. The same amplifier was operated at $3.2\mathrm{K}$ and achieved a peak signal gain of $11\mathrm{dB}$ whilst having a pump separation factor of $10.5\mathrm{dB}$. The pump separation scheme, and these promising results, will advance the development of superconducting resonator amplifiers as an important technology in quantum sensing.

References in corpus (16)

• Broadband parametric amplification with impedance engineering: Beyond the gain-bandwidth product
• Evidence of a nonequilibrium distribution of quasiparticles in the microwave response of a superconducting aluminium resonator
• A three-wave mixing kinetic inductance traveling-wave amplifier with near-quantum-limited noise performance
• Low-noise kinetic inductance traveling-wave amplifier using three-wave mixing
• Operation of a titanium nitride superconducting microresonator detector in the nonlinear regime
• A near-ideal degenerate parametric amplifier
• Wide-band Parametric Amplifier Readout and Resolution of Optical Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors
• Non-equilibrium superconductivity in superconducting resonators
• Kinetic Inductance Traveling Wave Amplifiers For Multiplexed Qubit Readout
• Nonlinear Effects in Superconducting Thin Film Microwave Resonators
• Nonlinear characteristics of Ti, Nb, and NbN superconducting resonators for parametric amplifiers
• SYNCA: A Synthetic Cyclotron Antenna for the Project 8 Collaboration
• Nonlinear mechanisms in Al and Ti superconducting travelling-wave parametric amplifiers
• Effects of reactive, dissipative and rate-limited nonlinearity on the behaviour of superconducting resonator parametric amplifiers
• Parametric amplification of electromagnetic waves produced by a flux-flow-oscillator made of YBaCuO Josephson junction arrays
• Quantum Noise Limited Phased Arrays for Single-Electron Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Determining Absolute Neutrino Mass using Quantum Technologies
• Superconducting Ring Resonators: Modelling, Simulation, and Experimental Characterisation
• Superconducting Parametric Amplifiers: Resonator Design and Role in Qubit Readout
• Superconducting NbN Resonator Parametric Amplifiers for Millimetre Wavelengths