313 research outputs found
The controllable pi - SQUID
We have fabricated and studied a new kind of DC SQUID in which the magnitude
and sign of the critical current of the individual Josephson junctions can be
controlled by additional voltage probes connected to the junctions. We show
that the amplitude of the voltage oscillations of the SQUID as a function of
the applied magnetic field can be tuned and that the phase of the oscillations
can be switched between 0 and in the temperature range of 0.1 - 4.2 K
using a suitable control voltage. This is equivalent to the external
application of (n+1/2) flux quantum.Comment: 3 Figures, submitted to Applied Physics Letter
Fluctuations in the electron system of a superconductor exposed to a photon flux
We report on fluctuations in the electron system, Cooper pairs and
quasiparticles, of a superconducting aluminium film. The superconductor is
exposed to pair-breaking photons (1.54 THz), which are coupled through an
antenna. The change in the complex conductivity of the superconductor upon a
change in the quasiparticle number is read out by a microwave resonator. A
large range in radiation power can be chosen by carefully filtering the
radiation from a blackbody source. We identify two regimes. At high radiation
power, fluctuations in the electron system caused by the random arrival rate of
the photons are resolved, giving a straightforward measure of the optical
efficiency (48%). At low radiation power fluctuations are dominated by excess
quasiparticles, the number of which is measured through their recombination
lifetime
Direct demonstration of circulating currents in a controllable -SQUID generated by a 0 to transition of the weak links
A controllable -SQUID is a DC SQUID with two controllable
-junctions as weak links. A controllable -junction consists of a
superconducting - normal metal - superconducting Josephson junction with two
additional contacts to the normal region of the junction. By applying a voltage
over these contacts it is possible to control the sate of the junction,
i.e. a conventional (0) state or a -state, depending on the magnitude of
. We demonstrate experimentally that, by putting one junction into a
-state, a screening current is generated around the SQUID loop at integer
external flux. To be able to do this, we have fabricated controllable
-junctions, based on Cu-Nb or Ag-Nb, in a new geometry. We show that at
1.4 K only the Nb-Ag device shows the transition to a -state as a function
of consistent with theoretical predictions. In a controllable SQUID
based on Nb-Ag we observe, a part from a screening current at integer external
flux, a phase shift of of the oscillations under suitable
current bias, depending on the magnitude of .Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures, subm. to Phys. Rev.
Microwave-induced excess quasiparticles in superconducting resonators measured through correlated conductivity fluctuations
We have measured the number of quasiparticles and their lifetime in aluminium
superconducting microwave resonators. The number of excess quasiparticles below
160 mK decreases from 72 to 17 m with a 6 dB decrease of the
microwave power. The quasiparticle lifetime increases accordingly from 1.4 to
3.5 ms. These properties of the superconductor were measured through the
spectrum of correlated fluctuations in the quasiparticle system and condensate
of the superconductor, which show up in the resonator amplitude and phase
respectively. Because uncorrelated noise sources vanish, fluctuations in the
superconductor can be studied with a sensitivity close to the vacuum noise
Number fluctuations of sparse quasiparticles in a superconductor
We have directly measured quasiparticle number fluctuations in a thin film
superconducting Al resonator in thermal equilibrium. The spectrum of these
fluctuations provides a measure of both the density and the lifetime of the
quasiparticles. We observe that the quasiparticle density decreases
exponentially with decreasing temperature, as theoretically predicted, but
saturates below 160 mK to 25-55 per cubic micron. We show that this saturation
is consistent with the measured saturation in the quasiparticle lifetime, which
also explains similar observations in qubit decoherence times
Reduced frequency noise in superconducting resonators
We report a reduction of the frequency noise in coplanar waveguide
superconducting resonators. The reduction of 7 dB is achieved by removing the
exposed dielectric substrate surface from the region with high electric fields
and by using NbTiN. In a model-analysis the surface of NbTiN is found to be a
negligible source of noise, experimentally supported by a comparison with NbTiN
on SiOx resonators. The reduction is additive to decreasing the noise by
widening the resonators.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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