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arXiv:1412.3619

Dry Dilution Refrigerator for Experiments on Quantum Effects in the Microwave Regime

Achim Marx, J. Hoess, Kurt Uhlig

Published Dec 11, 2014• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

At the Walther-Meißner-Institut (WMI), a new cryogen-free 3He/4He dilution refrigerator (DR) has been completed; the cryostat will be employed to cool experiments on superconducting quantum circuits for quantum information technology and quantum simulations. All major components have been made at the WMI. The DR offers lots of space at the various stages of the apparatus for microwave components and cables. E. g., the usable space at the mixing chamber has a height of more than 60 cm and a diameter of 30 cm (mixing chamber mounting plate). To cool cables and cold amplifiers, the DR is equipped with a separate 4He-1K-loop which offers a cooling power of up to 100 mW near 1K. The refrigeration power of the still is 18 mW at 0.9 K; the diameter of its mounting plate is 35 cm. The cryostat rests in an aluminum trestle on air springs to attenuate building vibrations. It is precooled by a Cryomech PT410-RM pulse tube cryocooler (PTC) which is mechanically decoupled from the vacuum can of the cryostat by a bellows assembly. The two stages of the PTC are thermally connected to the DR via copper ropes. There are no nitrogen cooled traps with this DR to purify the gas streams of the 3He and 4He loops; instead, charcoal traps are mounted inside the DR at the first stage of the PTC. The dilution unit has three heat exchangers; its base temperature is 11 mK and its cooling power is 300 μW at 100 mK.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1412.3619

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At the Walther-Meißner-Institut (WMI), a new cryogen-free 3He/4He dilution refrigerator (DR) has been completed; the cryostat will be employed to cool experiments on superconducting quantum circuits for quantum information technology and quantum simulations. All major components have been made at the WMI. The DR offers lots of space at the various stages of the apparatus for microwave components and cables. E. g., the usable space at the mixing chamber has a height of more than 60 cm and a diameter of 30 cm (mixing chamber mounting plate). To cool cables and cold amplifiers, the DR is equipped with a separate 4He-1K-loop which offers a cooling power of up to 100 mW near 1K. The refrigeration power of the still is 18 mW at 0.9 K; the diameter of its mounting plate is 35 cm. The cryostat rests in an aluminum trestle on air springs to attenuate building vibrations. It is precooled by a Cryomech PT410-RM pulse tube cryocooler (PTC) which is mechanically decoupled from the vacuum can of the cryostat by a bellows assembly. The two stages of the PTC are thermally connected to the DR via copper ropes. There are no nitrogen cooled traps with this DR to purify the gas streams of the 3He and 4He loops; instead, charcoal traps are mounted inside the DR at the first stage of the PTC. The dilution unit has three heat exchangers; its base temperature is 11 mK and its cooling power is 300 μW at 100 mK.
A cryogen-free cryostat was set up in order to perform measurements at ultra low temperatures. The setup involved the removal of an adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR) and replacing it with a dilution refrigerator system. The modified cryostat is able to provide continuous cooling power, enabling greater flexibility over the ADR in the type of low temperature experiments that can be performed. Condensation stages, main flow impedance and radiation baffles were designed, constructed and installed into the cryostat. Several general cryostat design considerations are also discussed. Condensation of the incoming 3He - 4He mixture utilizes only the cooling power of the two-stage pulse tube refrigerator. For a circulation rate of 120 μmols/sec, the base temperature of the cryostat is 70 mK with a cooling power of 33 μW of heat at 100 mK. \nWith this cryostat, a measurement system is developed for studying superconducting microwave resonators. Residual losses in these devices continue to impede their performance in applications such as ultra sensitive detectors and quantum computing. A microwave circuit consisting of coaxial cables, attenuators and amplifiers was installed on the cryostat to measure losses in these devices. Data analysis and fitting procedures were written in Python programming language to extract key resonator properties. Characterizing and understanding loss mechanisms for these devices will lead to improved materials and fabrication methods. This will ultimately result in losses that approach the fundamental limit set by the Mattis-Bardeen theory.
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Rapid thermal cycling is a central bottleneck in the development of superconducting quantum devices: conventional dilution refrigerators require cooldowns of a day or more and substantial cryogenic infrastructure, which throttles the fabricate-measure-redesign loop. We present an ultracompact dilution refrigerator (3 kg in mass and 100 mm in diameter) that completes a full cooldown-warm-up cycle to a base temperature of 70 mK in 1.2 hours when unloaded, and in 2.1 hours when fully equipped with the microwave wiring required for qubit measurements, while delivering 20 microW of cooling power at 100 mK. We validate the platform through a complete characterization of a two-fluxonium device: we extract the full circuit Hamiltonian by two-tone spectroscopy, measure energy-relaxation and coherence times, and benchmark single-qubit control. Although the relaxation time is limited by the base temperature of the system, we reach a single-qubit gate fidelity of up to 99%, at the coherence limit set by our operating temperature. These results demonstrate that compact, fast-cycling dilution refrigeration can support state-of-the-art quantum-device characterization without sacrificing measurement quality, offering a practical route to high-throughput quantum-hardware development.
Microwave experiments in dilution refrigerators are a central tool in the field of superconducting quantum circuits and other research areas. This type of experiments relied so far on attaching a device to the mixing chamber of a dilution refrigerator. The minimum turnaround time in this case is a few days as required by cooling down and warming up the entire refrigerator. We developed a new approach, in which a suitable sample holder is attached to a cold-insertable probe and brought in contact with transmission lines permanently mounted inside the cryostat. The total turnaround time is 8 h if the target temperature is 80 mK. The lowest attainable temperature is 30 mK. Our system can accommodate up to six transmission lines, with a measurement bandwidth tested from zero frequency to 12 GHz. This bandwidth is limited by low-pass components in the setup; we expect the intrinsic bandwidth to be at least 18 GHz. We present our setup, discuss the experimental procedure, and give examples of experiments enabled by this system. This new measurement method will have a major impact on systematic ultra-low temperature studies using microwave signals, including those requiring quantum coherence.
Cryogen-free low-temperature setups are becoming more prominent in experimental science due to their convenience and reliability, and concern about the increasing scarcity of helium as a natural resource. Despite not having any moving parts at the cold end, pulse tube cryocoolers introduce vibrations that can be detrimental to the experiments. We characterize the coupling of these vibrations to the electrical signal observed on cables installed in a cryogen-free dilution refrigerator. The dominant electrical noise is in the 5-10 kHz range and its magnitude is found to be strongly temperature dependent. We test the performance of different cables designed to diagnose and tackle the noise, and find triboelectrics to be the dominant mechanism coupling the vibrations to the electrical signal. Flattening a semi-rigid cable or jacketing a flexible cable in order to restrict movement within the cable, successfully reduces the noise level by over an order of magnitude. Furthermore, we characterize the effect of the pulse tube vibrations on an electron spin qubit device in this setup. Coherence measurements are used to map out the spectrum of the noise experienced by the qubit, revealing spectral components matching the spectral signature of the pulse tube.
Cryogen-free dilution refrigerators (dry fridges) have become an increasingly popular solution to researchers’ cryogenic measurement needs due to their user friendliness and long term use cost savings (4He does not need to be replenished). However, commercially available dry fridges frequently have an effective electron temperatures much warmer than the base temperature of the mixing chamber of the dry fridge. This thesis documents efforts taken to reduce the electron temperature in a dry fridge and the direct probing of the electron temperature via Coulomb blockade thermometry in a 500 nm wide quantum dot.