학술논문

Development of an SIS Mixer-Based Low-Noise Amplifier Amenable to Josephson Oscillator Pumping
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. Applied Superconductivity, IEEE Transactions on. 33(5):1-4 Aug, 2023
Subject
Fields, Waves and Electromagnetics
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Junctions
Mixers
Oscillators
Temperature measurement
Josephson junctions
Gain
Superconducting microwave devices
Conversion gain
low noise amplifier
multi-beam receiver
quantum computer
SIS mixer
Language
ISSN
1051-8223
1558-2515
2378-7074
Abstract
We propose a low-noise and low-power-consumption microwave amplifier using superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixers as quasi-particle frequency up- and down-converters pumped by a Josephson array oscillator in the millimeter-wave band. A proof-of-concept study of an amplifier with two W-band waveguide mixers using Nb/Al-AlOx/Nb junctions in a cascade connection demonstrated an average gain of 6 dB and a noise temperature of 12 K from nearly DC to 5 GHz. We also designed and fabricated a Josephson array oscillator at 100 GHz, which consisted of 31 overdamped Josephson junctions placed at each half-wavelength in an Nb microstrip line. The estimated output power of the oscillator was 0.2 μW at 100 GHz, which can be increased by increasing the number of the oscillator junctions. These results suggest that the proposed SIS mixer-based amplifier is suitable for on-chip integrated circuits to be implemented in large-scale multipixel SIS receivers and quantum computers.