The SQUID Handbook

This two-volume handbook offers a comprehensive and well coordinated presentation of SQUIDs (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices), including device fundamentals, design, technology, system construction and multiple applications. It is intended to bridge the gap between fundamentals and applications, and will be a valuable textbook reference for graduate students and for professionals engaged in SQUID research and engineering. It will also be of use to specialists in multiple fields of practical SQUID applications, from human brain research and heart diagnostics to airplane and nuclea

Superconductor Electronics: Status and Outlook

Superconductor electronics combines passive and active superconducting components and sometimes normal resistors into functional circuits and systems that also include room-temperature electronics for amplification, power sources, necessary controls, etc., usually computer operated. Furthermore, complete systems include magnetic and electromagnetic shielding, cryogenic enclosures, and increasingly a cryocooler in self-contained units. Components or devices of low or high critical temperature superconductors include inductances (coils), passive transmission lines, resonators, antennae, filters, as well as active elements: Josephson junctions, Josephson oscillators, and superconducting quantum interference devices. Of multiple demonstrated applications, mostly but not only in science and metrology, currently most successful are voltage standards, astronomy detectors and large telescope cameras, instruments for material characterization, and magnetometers for geomagnetic prospecting. Major current efforts concentrate on energy-efficient high-end computing and quantum computing. The outcomes of these efforts are likely to be known in the course of the following decade

An insight into voltage-biased superconducting quantum interference devices

We experimentally studied two important parameters of helium-cooled superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) in the voltage bias mode: the dynamic resistance Rd and the flux-to-current transfer coefficient ?i/?phi, with different junction shunt resistors RJ. We investigated a voltage-biased SQUID using the direct readout current-to-voltage converter scheme involving an operational amplifier. At higher RJ, the flux-to-voltage conversion coefficient ?V/?phi becomes sufficiently large to effectively suppress the room-temperature amplifier´s noise without any need for additional feedback circuits. The McCumber parameter limits the rise of ?V/?phi. We discuss the performance of voltage-biased SQUIDs at different effective McCumber parameters

High temperature RF SQUIDs for biomedical applications

The authors have been investigating the feasibility of radio-frequency RF, low-noise superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometers and gradiometers operating in liquid nitrogen at 77 K. Using flux-focusing structures fabricated from epitaxial YBa2Cu3O7-x films, they have attained a magnetic field resolution for a magnetometer of better than 200 fT Hz-1/2 at less than 1 Hz, i.e. over the low signal-frequency range important for biomedical diagnostics. At 77 K, this magnetometer recorded diagnostically useful heart signals, voluntary eye-blink signals and also the first evoked response of a human brain. These and similar results were obtained in a magnetically shielded room. The authors were also able to record heart signals in the absence of any shielding when using a first-order gradiometer. An improvement in the magnetic field resolution of the magnetometers and gradiometers by, at least, another order of magnitude is possible and probable

Parameter tolerance of the SQUID bootstrap circuit

We recently demonstrated and analysed the voltage-biased SQUID bootstrap circuit (SBC) conceived to suppress the preamplifier noise contribution in the absence of flux modulation readout. Our scheme contains both the additional voltage and current feedbacks. In this study, we analysed the tolerance of the SBC noise suppression performance to spreads in SQUID and SBC circuit parameters. Analytical results were confirmed by experiments. A one-time adjustable current feedback can be used to extend the tolerance to spreads such as those caused by the integrated circuit fabrication process. This should help to improve the fabrication yield of SBC devices integrated on one chip—as required for multi-channel SQUID systems

Analysis of a dc SQUID readout scheme with voltage feedback circuit and low-noise preamplifier

We analyzed the dc SQUID with voltage feedback circuit (VFC) and a low-noise room-temperature preamplifier to evaluate the feasibility of a low-noise SQUID direct-coupled readout scheme (DRS), possibly eliminating the need for a two-stage scheme employing a SQUID preamplifier. The passive VFC, connected in parallel to the SQUID, consists of a resistor Rs in series with an inductor L s. This inductor is coupled to the SQUID by a mutual inductance Ms. The purpose of the VFC is to increase the SQUID's flux-to-voltage transfer coefficient ∂V/∂Φ, thus reducing the preamplifier noise contribution δΦpreamp. However, at the same time, VFC introduces the thermal noise of Rs, δΦR, which may not be negligible. Generally, the noise of the readout scheme, δΦreadout, may thus include both δΦpreamp and δΦR, i.e., δΦreadout2 = δΦpreamp2 + δΦR2. To characterize the SQUID operation with VFC we introduced two dimensionless parameters, r = Rs/Rd and Δ = (M s/Mdyn) − (Rs/R d), where Rd and Mdyn = 1/(∂i/∂Φ) are dynamic properties of the SQUID itself. For assumed intrinsic SQUID parameters, we then numerically analyzed the dependence of δΦreadout noise components on r and Δ to determine their suitable ranges and the minimum of δΦreadout. To verify our analysis, we experimentally characterized, in liquid helium, three niobium SQUIDs with VFC, having suitably chosen r and Δ. The measured SQUID system flux noise was on the order of 1 μΦ0/√Hz, comparable to the intrinsic noise of the SQUID itself. The deduced equivalent voltage noise was comparable to that of a SQUID preamplifier in the two-stage readout. Simple single-stage ultra-low-noise SQUID DRS readout was thus demonstrated