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Conference on Precision Electromagnetic Measurements

An optoelectronic coupling for pulse-driven Josephson junction arrays

Jane Ireland, Dale Henderson, Jonathan M. J. Williams, Oliver Kieler, J. Kohlmann, Ralf Behr, Jarle Gran, Helge Malmbekk, K. Lind, Chi Kwong Tang

Published Aug 1, 2014• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The optoelectronic coupling for a pulse-driven Josephson junction array (JJA) for use as a quantum voltage synthesizer has been designed. This system uses optoelectronic components to drive a group of JJAs in parallel. Since the drive system is electrically isolated from the JJAs, they can be connected in series, leading to a higher output voltage. A thin film circuit, including interdigitated capacitors to couple a photodiode to the JJAs has been designed and tested and shown to meet the design goals.

DOI
10.1109/cpem.2014.6898290

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The optoelectronic coupling for a pulse-driven Josephson junction array (JJA) for use as a quantum voltage synthesizer has been designed. This system uses optoelectronic components to drive a group of JJAs in parallel. Since the drive system is electrically isolated from the JJAs, they can be connected in series, leading to a higher output voltage. A thin film circuit, including interdigitated capacitors to couple a photodiode to the JJAs has been designed and tested and shown to meet the design goals.
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A new method of driving series arrays of non-hysteretic Josephson junctions using optoelectronically generated pulses to synthesize a variable output voltage is described. Electrical pulses from a photodiode are coupled to the array, and the mean output voltage after filtering is proportional to the pulse repetition frequency with fundamental accuracy. Numerical simulations of the behaviour of the Josephson junctions have been carried out, and these results have been verified by experiment. This technique can be easily extended by using two photodiodes with opposite bias polarities in order to synthesize bipolar alternating or direct voltages.
This paper describes development of a new technique to drive Josephson junction arrays (JJA). We have designed and built an optical pulse generator (up to 12 GHz pulse rate) based on a mode-locked laser to feed an ultra-fast photodiode which again can drive current pulses to a JJA. Our preliminary experiments show that precise direct current (dc) voltages can be realized with a JJA with 5000 junctions. The work ultimately aims at development of an arbitrary pulse pattern generator allowing generation of precise arbitrary voltage waveforms.
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An optoelectronic pulse drive system based on commercially available telecoms optoelectronic components and a field-programmable gate array has been developed. In order to allow the use of ac-coupled optoelectronic components, a method of adding and subtracting complementary pulses was developed. The system was used to drive a Josephson junction array to synthesize quantum-accurate voltage waveforms. These waveforms will be used in voltage waveform metrology applications. Results from the synthesis of sinusoidal unipolar voltage waveforms from 3 to 300 kHz are presented. The margin of operation was measured and shown to require an optical pulse height stability better than 0.15 mW. The use of delta-sigma code with repeated sections, suitable for a quantum voltage digitizer was also examined. A test code corresponding to a delta-sigma feedback loop rate of 250 MHz was used to synthesize a 3.125 kHz sinusoidal waveform.