53 research outputs found
Low Power Superconducting Microwave Applications and Microwave Microscopy
We briefly review some non-accelerator high-frequency applications of
superconductors. These include the use of high-Tc superconductors in front-end
band-pass filters in cellular telephone base stations, the High Temperature
Superconductor Space Experiment, and high-speed digital electronics. We also
present an overview of our work on a novel form of near-field scanning
microscopy at microwave frequencies. This form of microscopy can be used to
investigate the microwave properties of metals and dielectrics on length scales
as small as 1 mm. With this microscope we have demonstrated quantitative
imaging of sheet resistance and topography at microwave frequencies. An
examination of the local microwave response of the surface of a heat-treated
bulk Nb sample is also presented.Comment: 11 pages, including 6 figures. Presented at the Eight Workshop on RF
Superconductivity. To appear in Particle Accelerator
Mathematical Contributions to the Dynamics of the Josephson Junctions: State of the Art and Open Problems
Mathematical models related to some Josephson junctions are pointed out and
attention is drawn to the solutions of certain initial boundary problems and to
some of their estimates. In addition, results of rigorous analysis of the
behaviour of these solutions when the time tends to infinity and when the small
parameter tends to zero are cited. These analyses lead us to mention some of
the open problems.Comment: 11 page
Improving wafer-scale Josephson junction resistance variation in superconducting quantum coherent circuits
Quantum bits, or qubits, are an example of coherent circuits envisioned for
next-generation computers and detectors. A robust superconducting qubit with a
coherent lifetime of (100 s) is the transmon: a Josephson junction
functioning as a non-linear inductor shunted with a capacitor to form an
anharmonic oscillator. In a complex device with many such transmons, precise
control over each qubit frequency is often required, and thus variations of the
junction area and tunnel barrier thickness must be sufficiently minimized to
achieve optimal performance while avoiding spectral overlap between neighboring
circuits. Simply transplanting our recipe optimized for single, stand-alone
devices to wafer-scale (producing 64, 1x1 cm dies from a 150 mm wafer)
initially resulted in global drifts in room-temperature tunneling resistance of
30%. Inferring a critical current variation from this
resistance distribution, we present an optimized process developed from a
systematic 38 wafer study that results in 3.5% relative standard deviation
(RSD) in critical current () for 3000 Josephson junctions (both single-junctions and
asymmetric SQUIDs) across an area of 49 cm. Looking within a 1x1 cm moving
window across the substrate gives an estimate of the variation characteristic
of a given qubit chip. Our best process, utilizing ultrasonically assisted
development, uniform ashing, and dynamic oxidation has shown = 1.8% within 1x1 cm, on average,
with a few 1x1 cm areas having 1.0% (equivalent to 0.5%). Such stability would drastically improve the yield of
multi-junction chips with strict critical current requirements.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures. Revision includes supplementary materia
On the transition from parabolicity to hyperbolicity for a nonlinear equation under Neumann boundary conditions
An integro differential equation which is able to describe the evolution of a
large class of dissipative models, is considered. By means of an equivalence,
the focus shifts to the perturbed sine- Gordon equation that in
superconductivity finds interesting applications in multiple engineering areas.
The Neumann boundary problem is considered, and the behaviour of a viscous
term, defined by a high order derivative with small diffusion coefficient , is
investigated. The Green function, expressed by means of Fourier series, is
considered, and an estimate is achieved. Furthermore, some classes of solutions
of the hyperbolic equation are determined, proving that there exists at least
one solution with bounded derivatives. Results obtained prove that diffusion
effects are bounded and tend to zero when e tends to zero.Comment: Meccanica (2018). arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1602.0907
Ultra-Low-Power Superconductor Logic
We have developed a new superconducting digital technology, Reciprocal
Quantum Logic, that uses AC power carried on a transmission line, which also
serves as a clock. Using simple experiments we have demonstrated zero static
power dissipation, thermally limited dynamic power dissipation, high clock
stability, high operating margins and low BER. These features indicate that the
technology is scalable to far more complex circuits at a significant level of
integration. On the system level, Reciprocal Quantum Logic combines the high
speed and low-power signal levels of Single-Flux- Quantum signals with the
design methodology of CMOS, including low static power dissipation, low latency
combinational logic, and efficient device count.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure
Single-charge devices with ultrasmall Nb/AlOx/Nb trilayer Josephson junctions
Josephson junction transistors and 50-junction arrays with linear junction
dimensions from 200 nm down to 70 nm were fabricated from standard Nb/AlOx/Nb
trilayers. The fabrication process includes electron beam lithography, dry
etching, anodization, and planarization by chemical-mechanical polishing. The
samples were characterized at temperatures down to 25 mK. In general, all
junctions are of high quality and their I-U characteristics show low leakage
currents and high superconducting energy gap values of 1.35 meV. The
characteristics of the transistors and arrays exhibit some features in the
subgap area, associated with tunneling of Cooper pairs, quasiparticles and
their combinations due to the redistribution of the bias voltage between the
junctions. Total island capacitances of the transistor samples ranged from 1.5
fF to 4 fF, depending on the junction sizes. Devices made of junctions with
linear dimensions below 100 nm by 100 nm demonstrate a remarkable
single-electron behavior in both superconducting and normal state. We also
investigated the area dependence of the junction capacitances for transistor
and array samples.Comment: 19 pages incl. 2 tables and 11 figure
- …