Superconducting electronics testing

Marc Currie

Coenrad Johann Fourie, Willem Jakobus Perold, U. Buttner

As the clock speeds of experimental digital electronic circuits increase beyond the measurement ranges of commercial oscilloscopes, the testing and verification thereof becomes a significant problem. Superconducting circuits add further complications, such as 4 Kelvin operating temperatures, output signal levels of around 300 muV, and the need for comprehensive magnetic field screening. This article discusses the testing of such circuits with minimal equipment and very low budgets

Aleksander I. Braginski

H. Weinstock, Nisenhoff, Martin

Denis Meledin, Daniel P. Marrone, Edward Tong +9 more

In this paper, we describe a superconducting hot-electron-bolometer mixer receiver developed to operate in atmospheric windows between 800-1300 GHz. The receiver uses a waveguide mixer element made of 3-4-nm-thick NbN film deposited over crystalline quartz. This mixer yields double-sideband receiver noise temperatures of 1000 K at around 1.0 THz, and 1600 K at 1.26 THz, at an IF of 3.0 GHz. The receiver was successfully tested in the laboratory using a gas cell as a spectral line test source. It is now in use on the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory terahertz test telescope in northern Chile.

Horst Rogalla