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arXiv:1704.04432 · Nature Electronics

Near-quantum-limited amplification from inelastic Cooper-pair tunnelling

S. Jebari, F. Blanchet, A. Grimm, Dibyendu Hazra, R. Albert, P. Joyez, D. Vion, D. Estève, F. Portier, M. Hofheinz

Published Apr 11, 2018• 48 citations
arXivHTMLPDF
DOI
10.1038/s41928-018-0055-7

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We experimentally show that the inelastic cooper-pair tunneling amplifier (ICTA), implementing a DC-powered parametric amplification scheme, can achieve gain and noise performance similar to that of AC-powered Josephson parametric amplifiers. Using experimental data and simulations, we show that the ICTA has near-quantum-limited noise as long as low-frequency voltage noise, expressed as broadening of the Josephson frequency line, is narrower than the amplification bandwidth. We observe a gain of 20 dB across a 11 MHz bandwidth with noise below 1.7 times the quantum limit when the full width at half maximum of the Josephson frequency linewidth is 5.6 MHz.
Fast, high-fidelity, single-shot readout of superconducting qubits in quantum processors demands quantum-limited amplifiers to preserve the optimal signal-to-noise ratio. Typically, quantum-limited amplification is achieved with parametric down-conversion of a strong pump tone, which imposes significant hardware overhead and severely limits scalability. Here, we demonstrate the first DC-powered broadband amplifier operating within 0.2 photons of the quantum limit. Our impedance-engineered Inelastic Cooper-pair Tunneling Amplifier (ICTA)-a voltage-biased SQUID in which Cooper pairs tunnel inelastically by emitting signal-idler photon pairs-operates in reflection, delivering 13 dB of average gain across a 3.5 GHz bandwidth in a single stage. Semiclassical simulations accurately predict the gain and saturation power, enabling further design improvements. By eliminating the pump-tone infrastructure, the broadband ICTA promises to dramatically reduce the hardware complexity of quantum-limited amplification in superconducting quantum processors.