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Journal of Communications Technology and Electronics

Harmonic mixer based on superconductor-insulator-superconductor tunnel junction

K. V. Kalashnikov, Andrey V. Khudchenko, A. B. Baryshev, V. P. Koshelets

Published Jun 1, 2011• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The operation of a harmonic mixer based on a superconductor-insulator-superconductor tunnel junction has been investigated. The dependence of the power of the intermediate-frequency signal on the parameters of the input signals and on the tunnel-junction bias voltage has been determined and experimentally measured. The theoretical and experimental data are in good qualitative and satisfactory quantitative agreement.

DOI
10.1134/s106422691106009x

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The operation of a harmonic mixer based on a superconductor-insulator-superconductor tunnel junction has been investigated. The dependence of the power of the intermediate-frequency signal on the parameters of the input signals and on the tunnel-junction bias voltage has been determined and experimentally measured. The theoretical and experimental data are in good qualitative and satisfactory quantitative agreement.
The level of signal reflection at an intermediate frequency from an SIS-mixer was calculated and experimentally measured. The measurement was performed for the mixer in operation, namely, it was biased by voltage and the signal of the local oscillator was applied. It is shown that the power reflection coefficient can vary from -20 to -3 dB depending on the operating point. An experimental method for determining the impedance of the supply line of the SIS-mixer is proposed and tested. Keywords: superconductor--insulator--superconductor tunnel junction, intermediate frequency, submillimeter SIS-mixer.
We describe a procedure for modeling the nonlinear, quantum-mechanical behavior of very high harmonic superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixers. A typical mixer is pumped by a strong microwave source at 10–15GHz, which causes high-harmonic (20–40) currents to flow, any one of which can be used as a local oscillator to downconvert a submillimeter-wave signal to a low microwave frequency, 1–8GHz. This mode of operation is attractive for measuring the beam patterns of conventional SIS mixers, because only a single submillimeter-wave source is needed. We conducted simulations using the 20th harmonic of a 13.5GHz microwave source, downconverting a 271.4GHz signal to a 1.4GHz intermediate frequency. These simulations clearly show that linear downconversion can be achieved even for relatively high levels of rf signal power; although, care is needed when choosing the operating point. The patterns of behavior seen in the simulations are in remarkable agreement with recently published experimental results.
We have demonstrated fundamental and harmonic mixing using a PbInAu/InOxPbOx/Ag superconductor-insulator-normal metal tunnel junction mixer designed to operate over the 450–550 GHz frequency range. Direct mixing experiments at up to 1.8 times the gap frequency of the tunnel junction have shown that the mixer works in both fundamental and second harmonic modes, with the highest conversion from the fundamental mode obtained at bias voltages near the gap voltage and the highest conversion from the harmonic mode obtained at zero bias. The measured mixer conversion curves are consistent with our five-port model simulations based on Tucker’s quantum mixer theory [IEEE J. Quantum. Electron. QE-15, 1234 (1979)].
A theoretical analysis of harmonic mixing in a quasiparticle tunnel junction at Vbias=0 shows that harmonic mixing for submillimeter frequencies is a viable alternative to fundamental mixing. It is also shown that the signal gain from the first harmonic above the pump frequency to the intermediate frequency is independent of the embedding admittance at the pump frequency. In fact, we show that the five-port model reduces to the three-port model as a result of the inversion symmetry of the I-V curve and, moreover, no large-signal analysis is necessary. Full simulations of harmonic mixing using a five-port model confirm these results. The simulations have been done for the case of a superconductor-insulator-normal junction in which there is no pair current interference. For this type of harmonic mixer we show that the local oscillator (LO) power requirement can be less than a fundamental mixer operating at the same signal frequency, which is particularly useful in circumventing the problems of high-frequency LO power generation.
We experimentally investigate different mixing regi-mes in Nb/AlOx/Nb and Nb/AlN/NbN tunnel superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) junctions. The SIS mixers were studied with regard to the following modes of operation: in an extremely low-frequency range (0.1-20 GHz) and as high harmonic mixers; n ≈ 20-30 at signal frequencies of about 500 GHz that requires high power of a local oscillator. The quasiparticle and Josephson mixing regimes have been compared. We demonstrate that, in some applications requiring high conversion efficiency, the Josephson regime can be more preferable than the quasiparticle regime due to a larger output signal and better signal-to-noise ratio. As an example of such an application, we consider the phase locking of a THz oscillator using a cryogenic harmonic phase detector, which only ought to realize all of its benefits under the Josephson mixing regime. In addition, we demonstrate that the presence of the Josephson effect results in considerable increase in conversion efficiency at the expense of the dynamic range decrease; it was measured for low-frequency up- and down-convertors, which are promising for cryogenic multiplexing systems.