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High-resolution superconducting single-flux quantum comparator for sub-Kelvin temperatures

Savin, Alexander, Pekola, J, Holmqvist, T, Hassel, J, Grönberg, L, Kidiyarova-Shevchenko, Anna

Published Jan 1, 2006• 16 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

A design of sub-Kelvin single-flux quantum (SFQ) circuits with reduced power dissipation and additional cooling of shunt resistors has been developed and characterized. The authors demonstrate operation of SFQ comparators with current resolution of 40nA at 2GHz sampling rate. Due to improved cooling the electron temperature in shunt resistors of a SFQ comparator is below 50mK when the bath temperature is about 30mK.

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Chinese Journal of Physics•Aug 1, 2004•0 citations
A design of sub-Kelvin single-flux quantum (SFQ) circuits with reduced power dissipation and additional cooling of shunt resistors has been developed and characterized. The authors demonstrate operation of SFQ comparators with current resolution of 40nA at 2GHz sampling rate. Due to improved cooling the electron temperature in shunt resistors of a SFQ comparator is below 50mK when the bath temperature is about 30mK.
Superconducting single flux quantum (SFQ) technology is well known for digital logic operations below 4.2 K, which are compatible with the Josephson junction qubit. Operation speed and signal sensitivity of circuits in SFQ are also sufficient to control qubits. Therefore, the SFQ circuit is a candidate technology for multiple qubit control. However, the self-heating effect of the SFQ circuit is a potential barrier to development of an SFQ-supported multiple qubit system because the qubit operating temperature is lower than the conventional 4.2 K. The multi-chip approach is a possible solution because the qubit chip can be thermally isolated from the SFQ circuitry. We report on recent progress in SFQ circuit and packaging technology for operation at sub-Kelvin temperatures. As for multi-chip module technology, a test sample of the multi-chip module shows good reliability of electrical connections between chips, and each solder bump has a bandwidth wide enough for signal transmission. We have designed lower power SFQ circuits for sub-Kelvin temperatures. The critical currents of Josephson junctions were scaled down, inductances were scaled up, and bias voltage was reduced to make power consumption lower. Based on our fabrication technology, critical current densities were optimized by considering trade-off relations between fabrication availability and operation speed. We successfully confirmed its correct operations at around 0.35 K. The combination of the multi-chip module and optimized SFQ circuits is very effective way of controlling qubit.
Superconducting single-flux-quantum (SFQ) circuits have so far been developed and optimized for operation at or above helium temperatures. The SFQ approach, however, should also provide potentially viable and scalable control and readout circuits for Josephson-junction qubits and other applications with much lower, millikelvin, operating temperatures. This paper analyzes the overheating problem which becomes important in this temperature range. We suggest a thermal model of the SFQ circuits at subkelvin temperatures and present experimental results on overheating of electrons and silicon substrate which support this model. The model establishes quantitative limitations on the dissipated power both for “local” electron overheating in resistors and “global” overheating due to ballistic phonon propagation along the substrate. Possible changes in the thermal design of SFQ circuits in view of the overheating problem are also discussed.
Rapid single-flux-quantum (RSFQ) technology has been proposed as control electronics for superconducting quantum bits because of the material and working temperature compatibility. In this work, we consider practical aspects of RSFQ circuit design for low noise low power operation. At the working temperature of 20 mK and operational frequency of 2 GHz, dissipated power per junction is reduced to 25 pW by using 6 µA critical current junctions available at the Hypres and VTT low J c fabrication process. To limit phonon temperature to 30 mK, a maximum of 40 junctions can be placed on a 5 mm × 5 mm chip. Electron temperature in resistive shunts of Josephson junctions is minimized by use of cooling fins, giving minimum electron temperatures of about 150 mK for the Hypres process and 70 mK for the VTT process.
We study a single-shot single-flux-quantum (SFQ) readout circuit based on current-to-time conversion for superconducting flux qubits. Circulating currents representing states of a qubit were converted to propagation delay time of SFQ pulses, and then detected by a time discriminator. The key parameter which determines the availability of single-shot readout is current resolution. We evaluated the current resolution by measuring the gray zone which was defined as the transition width in the output probability of the current-to-time converter with 1000 trials for each value of an input current. For reducing unwanted effects on the qubit, shunt resistors are required to be removed for Josephson junctions in the readout circuit. We designed two readout circuits for comparison, the circuit composed of shunted junctions and that of unshunted junctions. Gray zones were measured to be 4.8μA\mu{\rm A}μAfor unshunted junctions and 2.2μA\mu{\rm A}μAfor the shunted ones at 4.2 K. These gray zones may originate from Johnson noise. Operation at a reduced temperature and employment of a likelihood decision circuit will lead to reduced gray zone, i.e., improved current resolution sufficient for single-shot readout.
Single flux quantum (SFQ) logic circuits, in which a single flux quantum is used for an information carrier, have a possibility to open a new digital system operated with over 100 GHz clock frequencies at extremely low power dissipations. Recently, much progress in basic technologies for designing SFQ circuits and operating circuits with high speeds has been done. By taking advancements in these designing tools, circuits including more than several thousands junctions easily operated with the clock frequency of more than several tens GHz. Applications of SFQ circuits such as high performance computers, high end router and high end servers are being developed in the world taking advantages of the high through-put nature and the low power dissipation of the SFQ logic.