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IEEE Transactions on Magnetics

Superconducting microwave resonators for physics experiments

N. Klein, G. Müller, H. Piel, J. Schurr

Published Mar 1, 1989• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Superconducting resonators at K-band frequencies have been developed for different applications in general physics. Niobium pillbox cavities have been built for the one-atom maser experiment by which the interaction of Rydberg atoms with single microwave photons has been investigated. At 21.5 GHz and 1.3 K, quality factors of up to 10/sup 11/ were obtained. Coating of the cavity with Nb/sub 3/Sn resulted in quality factors of 6*10/sup 8/ at 4.2 K and 6*10/sup 9/ at 2 K. A superconducting Fabry-Perot resonator consisting of two spherically curved niobium mirrors was also investigated. The quality factor of 1.8*10/sup 7/ measured at 25 GHz and 4.2 K was found to be two orders of magnitude higher than for a corresponding copper resonator. Fabry-Perot resonators can be used for detecting small position changes for one mirror with respect to another caused by gravitational forces. First experiments with copper Fabry-Perot mirrors suspended in a vacuum chamber provided a maximum sensitivity for a gravitational acceleration of one mirror of 4*10/sup -11/ m/s/sup 2/. These results are promising for a possible fifth force detector based on a superconducting Fabry-Perot resonator.>

DOI
10.1109/20.92548

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Superconductor Science and Technology•Oct 18, 2007•19 citations
Superconducting resonators at K-band frequencies have been developed for different applications in general physics. Niobium pillbox cavities have been built for the one-atom maser experiment by which the interaction of Rydberg atoms with single microwave photons has been investigated. At 21.5 GHz and 1.3 K, quality factors of up to 10/sup 11/ were obtained. Coating of the cavity with Nb/sub 3/Sn resulted in quality factors of 610/sup 8/ at 4.2 K and 610/sup 9/ at 2 K. A superconducting Fabry-Perot resonator consisting of two spherically curved niobium mirrors was also investigated. The quality factor of 1.810/sup 7/ measured at 25 GHz and 4.2 K was found to be two orders of magnitude higher than for a corresponding copper resonator. Fabry-Perot resonators can be used for detecting small position changes for one mirror with respect to another caused by gravitational forces. First experiments with copper Fabry-Perot mirrors suspended in a vacuum chamber provided a maximum sensitivity for a gravitational acceleration of one mirror of 410/sup -11/ m/s/sup 2/. These results are promising for a possible fifth force detector based on a superconducting Fabry-Perot resonator.>
Abstract A superconducting Fabry–Perot microwave cavity for a molecular trap was designed, constructed and characterized. The cavity was designed to create intense microwave fields that are sufficient to trap cold polar molecules by the AC Stark force. By coating the mirror surfaces with a superconducting material, an unloaded quality factor of up to 1.1 × 106 at 24.087 GHz was achieved at a temperature of 2.24 K. The field strength of 1.06 MV m−1 obtained for a TEM02 transverse mode with an input power of 10 W is sufficiently intense to trap ammonia molecules at a temperature of 85 mK, which is achievable by a conventional Stark molecular decelerator. We have also implemented an ion optics assembly for sensitive detection of molecules inside the microwave cavity by resonance enhanced multi-photon ionization.
In this master's thesis, I present the design, fabrication, and characterisation of superconducting microwave resonators. These resonators are quarter-wavelength coplanar waveguide resonators, operating at resonance frequencies between 4 GHz and 8 GHz. This kind of resonator is a key component in several applications, ranging from quantum computation devices to parametric amplifiers. Minimising the losses (achieving high internal quality factors) in these resonators is important to maximise performance of the applications they are used for. During the thesis work, we have studied several possible changes to improve the resonator quality.\n\nFabrication of the resonators was done in the Nanofabrication Laboratory at Chalmers University of Technology, and consist of the following steps: cleaning a sapphire or silicon wafer, depositing a layer of superconducting niobium, photolithography, and etching the waveguide. We then measured the resonators in a cryogen-free dilution refrigerator, at a temperature of 10 mK. The measurements consisted of a power sweep, in order to quantify the quality factor at high and low excitation powers. As an example, the first resonator we fabricated had a quality factor of 4.3 x 10^4 at high power (about 10^5 photons in the resonator), and quality factor of 3.7 x 10^4 at the single-photon level.\n\nWe then investigated different loss mechanisms that we expect to negatively affect the quality factor, and how to reduce this loss. Firstly, to reduce radiation losses and magnetic vortex losses, we reduced the lateral dimensions of the resonator. Secondly, as two-level system (TLS) losses are believed to mainly reside at the surfaces of the materials and interfaces between them, we etched into the substrate to selectively move a part of the TLS away from the resonator. We also studied the effect of the meandering of the resonator on the quality factor, as well as using two different etching gasses.\n\nBy gathering all this data, we were then able to compare the different combinations to see the effect of the changing parameters. In conclusion, the reduced lateral dimensions and the removal of part of the substrate indeed reduce the losses, as expected from the theory. We also found interesting behaviour with regards to the meandering, namely that having a meandered structure negatively affects the quality factor.\n\nCombining all results, we can give a guideline for the fabrication of resonators in the future, which gave us a quality factor up to 4.9 x 10^5 at high excitation power, and 3.0 x 10^5 at the single photon level.
We report our development on design, fabrication and characterization of various superconducting resonators for quantum device applications. The resonators are developed mainly for superconducting qubit implementation in circuit QED structure, but future application will include photon detectors such as microwave kinetic inductance detectors. First we designed and fabricated half-wavelength coplanar waveguide resonators with niobium thin film on a high resistive silicon wafer, with the fundamental frequencies in the range of 1 to 8 GHz. The loaded quality factors are controlled by the coupling capacitors, and the lower bound of the intrinsic quality factor was measured down to 7 mK in the dilution refrigerator. We have also designed quarter-wavelength resonators and lumped LC resonators coupled to a transmission line, and characterized multiple resonators in a single transmission line. For the 3D transmon qubit application, we designed and fabricated a rectangular box resonator with superconducting aluminum. The intrinsic quality factor of the box resonator exceeds three million at 7 mK. We will also present basic results on the integration of a transmon qubit in the superconducting resonator.
The work on the one-atom maser is reviewed. The superconducting maser cavity made of niobium and cooled to 0.5 K to exclude thermal photons has a quality factor of 3 X 1010. Velocity-selected Rydberg atoms pump the maser. The field inside the cavity is investigated by probing the atoms leaving the cavity. The dynamics of the Rabi nutation were investigated. Furthermore, the statistics of the photons in the cavity were determined to be sub-Poissonian corresponding to photon-number fluctuations of 70% below the vacuum-state limit. The one-atom maser is the only maser system which leads to nonclassical radiation even when pumping processes with Poissonian statistics are used. Some applications of the one- atom maser to study the quantum measurement process also are discussed.
The use of a transmission line resonator offers the possibility for different sensor readout methods, e.g. flux qubit and kinetic inductance detectors. Both cases require a high quality factor, Q L , of the cavity circuit to detect small deviations in the resonance frequency. Various superconducting niobium coplanar waveguide resonators of λ/4 and λ/2 wavelength for 3 and 6 GHz were developed. Different layouts for the coplanar resonators were designed, simulated and measured on common silicon and sapphire substrates at 4.2 K. We found a very good agreement between simulation and measurement results, with Q L between 10 4 and 10 5 at helium temperatures. The presented results show the dependences on the chosen cross section geometries, the coupling factor and the complex layout of the transmission line.