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IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Optically modulated superconducting delay lines

Elie K. Track, R.E. Drake, Gert K. G. Hohenwarter

Published Mar 1, 1993• 18 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Optical modulation is investigated for superconducting microstrip delay lines on 2-in-diameter, 10-mil-thick LaAlO/sub 3/ substrates. The linewidth of 80 mu m yields a characteristic impedance of 50 Omega . The linepitch of 100 mil is chosen to minimize the coupling between adjacent lines. The total meander line length is 64 cm. The measured delay is 8 ns with operation from DC to 20 GHz. The design was implemented using niobium, niobium nitride, and YBCO. The measurements were performed in a dewar and in a closed-cycle refrigerator, with both RF and optical access. Optical illumination of the lines resulted in a phase shift of the transmitted signal. Using a 10-mW He-Ne laser, phase shifts of up to 360 degrees at 20 GHz were measured with NbN and YBCO. The phase shifts increased linearly with frequency and with optically intensity. The effect can be attributed to a small, bolometric modulation of the line inductance.>

DOI
10.1109/77.234006

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IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques•Dec 1, 1987•51 citations
Optical modulation is investigated for superconducting microstrip delay lines on 2-in-diameter, 10-mil-thick LaAlO/sub 3/ substrates. The linewidth of 80 mu m yields a characteristic impedance of 50 Omega . The linepitch of 100 mil is chosen to minimize the coupling between adjacent lines. The total meander line length is 64 cm. The measured delay is 8 ns with operation from DC to 20 GHz. The design was implemented using niobium, niobium nitride, and YBCO. The measurements were performed in a dewar and in a closed-cycle refrigerator, with both RF and optical access. Optical illumination of the lines resulted in a phase shift of the transmitted signal. Using a 10-mW He-Ne laser, phase shifts of up to 360 degrees at 20 GHz were measured with NbN and YBCO. The phase shifts increased linearly with frequency and with optically intensity. The effect can be attributed to a small, bolometric modulation of the line inductance.>
This paper reports the design, fabrication, and measurements of optically tunable superconducting microwave resonators and delay lines. The devices are comprised of superconducting coplanar waveguide (CPW) transmission lines fabricated from a 100 nm-thick YBCO film, interrupted by 3- and 5-m YBCO meander structures of the same thickness on top of an LAO substrate. The CPW is tested at 77 K up to a frequency of 50 GHz, where it exhibits a transmission loss of about 0.12 dB/mm. The measurements are done in a cryogenic microwave probe station, where all the calibrations have been performed at 77 K. It has been observed that the resonance frequencies of the superconducting resonators can be changed by more than 2 GHz under the optical illumination at a wavelength of 1550 nm. The delay lines also exhibit a phase retardation of up to 90 at the same operating conditions.
The authors report on the design, simulation, fabrication, and measurement of very long superconducting coplanar waveguide delay lines on 3-in-diameter LaAlO/sub 3/ substrates. Variations of the design involving the addition of a ground plane on the backside of the substrate and for the use of gold wire-bond bridges to electrically connect the in-plane ground planes were investigated. A delay of 45 ns was measured for a line length of 4.3 m. The best response was obtained with wire-bond connections and no backside ground plane. A resonance-free insertion loss of less than 0.01 dB/ns was obtained with a 1.7-GHz bandwidth for NbN at 4.2 K. This is to be compared with a loss of 0.1 dB/ns for a 50-ns 0.141-in OD. (outer diameter) copper coaxial delay line that weighs 1.5 lb and 0.02 dB/ns for a 60-ns 1-in OD copper coaxial delay line that weighs 45 lb.>
Passive superconducting tapped delay lines have been fabricated for use as matched filters for multigigahertz bandwidth analog signal processing. Specifically, linear frequency-modulated dispersive delay lines, also known as chirp filters, having a bandwidth of 2.6 GHz centered at 4 GHz and a dispersion time of 35 ns have been constructed. The stripline structure consists of a 4000-Å-thick patterned niobium film sandwiched between 5-cm-diameter, 125-μm-thick sapphire wafers. Two parallel striplines, each 1.6-m long, are wound in a spiral pattern. The taps are backward-wave couplers formed by bringing the two lines into and out of proximity at specified locations. Pulse expansion and compression have been demonstrated with these devices and are in close agreement with a new theoretical model for this class of signal processors.
Using the method of time-domain optoelectronic sampling spectroscopy, we have tuned the ultrafast electrical pulse propagating through YBa/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub 7-x/ (YBCO) transmission lines as a function of temperature and optical pulse energy. Electrical pulses are generated by photoconductively shorting charged semiconducting optical switches with 70 psec optical pulses at 532 nm. The optically generated and detected electrical pulses have frequencies extending up to 100 GHz. The superconducting transmission lines are microstrip spiral lines on the LaAlO/sub 3/ substrates. By varying the optical pulse energy from 0 to 23 pJ, the delay time through the 66-mm-long superconducting line is tuned by 54 psec at 55 K and shows a quadratic dependence on the optical pulse energy. As for the 250 mm-long transmission line, the delay of 69 psec is observed as the temperature increases from 26 K to 63 K.
Superconducting microstrip, with phase velocities of about 0.01c, employing kinetic inductance have been fabricated using niobium nitride and a silicon dielectric. Delay lines using this phenomenon have several advantages for analog signal processing, including low loss and very compact size. Measurements of kinetic inductance microstrip delay lines were made in the frequency domain and the time domain. The results were compared to theoretical predictions and an accurate circuit model was developed. The circuit model was used to determine the frequency- and temperature-dependent losses of the delay line.