No Arabic abstract
Superconducting electronics often require high-density microwave interconnects capable of transporting signals between temperature stages with minimal loss, cross talk, and heat conduction. We report the design and fabrication of superconducting 53 wt% Nb-47 wt% Ti (Nb47Ti) FLexible coAXial ribbon cables (FLAX). The ten traces each consist of a 0.076 mm O.D. NbTi inner conductor insulated with PFA (0.28 mm O.D.) and sheathed in a shared 0.025 mm thick Nb47Ti outer conductor. The cable is terminated with G3PO coaxial push-on connectors via stainless steel capillary tubing (1.6 mm O.D., 0.13 mm thick) soldered to a coplanar wave guide transition board. The 30 cm long cable has 1 dB of loss at 8 GHz with -60 dB nearest-neighbor forward cross talk. The loss is 0.5 dB more than commercially available superconducting coax likely due to impedance mismatches caused by manufacturing imperfections in the cable. The reported cross talk is 30 dB lower than previously developed laminated NbTi-onKapton microstrip cables. We estimate the heat load from 1 K to 90 mK to be 20 nW per trace, approximately half the computed load from the smallest commercially available superconducting coax from CryoCoax
The careful filtering of microwave electromagnetic radiation is critical for controlling the electromagnetic environment for experiments in solid-state quantum information processing and quantum metrology at millikelvin temperatures. We describe the design and fabrication of a coaxial filter assembly and demonstrate that its performance is in excellent agreement with theoretical modelling. We further perform an indicative test of the operation of the filters by making current-voltage measurements of small, underdamped Josephson junctions at 15 mK.
Superconducting nanowires are widely used as sensitive single photon detectors with wide spectral coverage and high timing resolution. We describe a demonstration of an array of DC biased superconducting nanowire single photon detectors read out with a microwave multiplexing circuit. In this design, each individual nanowire is part of a resonant LC circuit where the inductance is dominated by the kinetic inductance of the nanowire. The circuit also contains two parallel plate capacitors, one of them is in parallel with the inductor and the other is coupled to a microwave transmission line which carries the signals to a cryogenic low noise amplifier. All of the nanowires are connected via resistors to a single DC bias line that enables the nanowires to be current biased close to their critical current. When a photon hits a nanowire it creates a normal hot spot which produces a voltage pulse across the LC circuit. This pulse rings down at the resonant frequency of the LC circuit over a time period that is fixed by the quality factor. We present measurements of an array of these devices and an evaluation of their performance in terms of frequency and time response.
We describe the design, fabrication, integration and characterization of a prototype superconducting filter bank with transition edge sensor readout designed to explore millimetre-wave detection at frequencies in the range 40 to 65 GHz. Results indicate highly uniform filter channel placement in frequency and high overall detection efficiency. The route to a full atmospheric sounding instrument in this frequency range is discussed.
Microwave Kinetic Inductance detectors (MKIDs) have been recognized as a powerful new tool for single photon detection. These highly multiplexed superconducting devices give timing and energy measurement for every detected photon. However, the full potential of MKID single photon spectroscopy has not been reached , the achieved energy resolution is lower than expected from first principles. Here, we study the efficiency in the phonon downconversion process following the absorption of energetic photons in MKIDs. Assuming previously published material properties, we measure an average downconversion efficiency for three TiN resonators is $eta$=0.14. We discuss how this efficiency can impact the intrinsic energy resolution of MKID, and how any uncertainty in the unknown density of electron states at the Fermi energy directly affects the efficiency estimations.
Thin flexible sheets of high-permeability FINEMET foils encased in thin plastic layers have been used to shield various types of 20-cm-diameter photomultiplier tubes from ambient magnetic fields. In the presence of the Earths magnetic field this type of shielding is shown to increase the collection efficiency of photoelectrons and can improve the uniformity of response of these photomultiplier tubes.