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IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement

Strong Attenuation of the Transients' Effect in Square Waves Synthesized With a Programmable Josephson Voltage Standard

B. Jeanneret, F. Overney, Alain Rüfenacht, J. Nissilä

Published Oct 8, 2009• 14 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This paper addresses the effect of transients on the operation of a 1-V programmable Josephson voltage standard for frequencies ranging between 125 Hz and 4 kHz. A detrimental effect of the transients occurring during the transition between different voltage steps is to make the ac Josephson voltage dependent on the bias current in the junctions. In other words, the current margins where the array behaves as a quantum standard are reduced to zero: the voltage steps have a slope. However, by using square waveforms, the effect of the transients can be reduced to a level where this slope is no longer measurable. This observation will probably lead to a simplification in the development of a new type of high-precision Josephson-based waveform synthesizer.

DOI
10.1109/tim.2009.2030920

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This paper addresses the effect of transients on the operation of a 1-V programmable Josephson voltage standard for frequencies ranging between 125 Hz and 4 kHz. A detrimental effect of the transients occurring during the transition between different voltage steps is to make the ac Josephson voltage dependent on the bias current in the junctions. In other words, the current margins where the array behaves as a quantum standard are reduced to zero: the voltage steps have a slope. However, by using square waveforms, the effect of the transients can be reduced to a level where this slope is no longer measurable. This observation will probably lead to a simplification in the development of a new type of high-precision Josephson-based waveform synthesizer.
We are developing a system for precise AC waveform synthesis in a frequency range below kilo-hertz using a programmable Josephson voltage standard (PJVS). Our PJVS circuit is composed of 65 536 NbN-based over-damped Josephson junctions and operated at a temperature of 9-10 K with a mechanical cooler. We succeeded in generating stepwise-approximated sinusoidal waveforms with peek voltage amplitude of 2 V using a 10-bit PJVS circuit and a bias source with twelve 12-bit digital-to-analog converters. Rough estimations suggest the transient time between each step in the obtained waveforms is less than 5 μs, sufficient for sampling measurements.
We propose a new method for transient-error-free AC voltage waveform synthesis using a programmable Josephson voltage standard (PJVS) array. Stepwise-approximated sinusoidal waveforms generated using PJVS can be potential tools for AC voltage calibration or related applications. However, the transient error caused by the transitions between quantized voltage steps is a crucial problem for some applications. By driving a PJVS array using high-speed periodical pulse packets and conventional DC biases, the influence of the transitions can essentially be eliminated. This paper describes the basic idea of our new method for driving a PJVS array.
A waveform synthesizer adopting a superconductor–normal metal–superconductor junction array has been developed, which can generate arbitrary stepwise waveforms with a number of quantum-voltage steps up to 1 V level amplitude. As an application of the synthesizer, we have built a sampling voltmeter that measures the differential voltages between a sinusoidal waveform produced by a semiconductor-based ac source and the Josephson waveforms. We carried out extensive sampling measurements for a 50 Hz sine wave with 1 V amplitude, applying sampling apertures in the range of 55 µs ⩽ t a ⩽ 130 µs and using Josephson waveforms with 32, 60, 80 and 100 quantum steps. From the measurements, the amplitude of the ac waveform was determined with a type A uncertainty ( k = 2) of 0.15 µV. Also, we elucidated how the phase jitter in the ac waveform is reflected in the overall uncertainty for the measurements. The type B uncertainty due to the jitter is at least one order of magnitude smaller than the type A uncertainty.
A quantum-accurate waveform with an rms output amplitude of 1 V has been synthesized for the first time. This fourfold increase in voltage over previous systems was achieved through developments and improvements in bias electronics, pulse-bias techniques, Josephson junction array circuit fabrication, and packaging. A recently described ac-coupled bipolar pulse-bias technique was used to bias a superconducting integrated circuit with 25 600 junctions, which are equally divided into four series-connected arrays, into the second quantum state. We describe these advancements and present the measured 1 V spectra for 2 Hz and 10 Hz sine waves that remained quantized over a 0.4 mA current range. We also demonstrate a 2 kHz sine wave produced with another bias technique that requires no compensation current and remains quantized at an rms voltage of 128 mV over a 1 mA current range. Increasing the clock frequency to 19 GHz also allowed us to achieve a maximum rms output voltage for a single array of 330 mV.
We have performed direct ac comparisons between two types of quantum voltage standards, a pulse-driven Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizer and a programmable Josephson voltage standard, at 1 V rms amplitude and a frequency of 100 Hz. The system architectures for these two Josephson technologies are quite different. However, in the range where their capabilities overlap, they should produce identical results. This comparison under various test conditions is a powerful method for verifying ideal performance of the systems, and exploring a number of potential systematic errors in both measurement methods and system operations.
Abstract This paper reports on the comparison of two Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizers for frequencies up to 500 kHz. Both independent pulse-driven Josephson arrays produce a 10 mV RMS sinusoidal voltage. They are alternately connected to an analog-to-digital converter which serves as a transfer standard. The setup is capable to of synthesizing quantum-based waveforms using two different pulse-bias techniques. We use the Zero-Compensation method and a two-pole high-pass filter structure in the pulse-bias configuration of one system (the reference) to minimize the amplitude error for signal frequencies up to 500 kHz. Consequently, we are able to directly detect the high-frequency voltage errors in the other system (the device under test). The setup is used to measure differences between both systems, and the influence of parameter variation on the results with Type A uncertainties of 0.4 µV/V ( k = 1) in measurement times of 60 s. We find that the dominant sources of deviations above 10 kHz can be traced to the influence of the output cabling and the pulse bias on the synthesized voltage signal. Our analysis explains the origin and the reduction of these high-frequency voltage errors.