Impact of the Josephson Arbitrary Waveform Synthesizer in electrical metrology and physics

Logan A. Howe, Adam J. Sirois, Manuel A. Castellanos-Beltran +4 more

Justus A. Brevik, Nathan E. Flowers-Jacobs, Anna E. Fox +3 more

M. Manzano, R. Zorzano

In this paper the setting up of a binary Josephson array waveform system for synthesization of arbitrary waveforms is described. The authors are with the Electricity Laboratory in the Metrology and Calibration Centre of INTA (Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aeroespacial) in Torrejon de Ardoz, Madrid, Spain.

B. Jeanneret, Samuel P. Benz

Oliver Kieler

This paper presents the basic principle of the pulse-driven ac Josephson voltage standard, also called “Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizer” (JAWS). We will mainly focus on activities and developments at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). The JAWS is suitable to generate high precision quantized waveforms, which can be arbitrarily programmed in the frequency and time domain with extremely high spectral purity (typical signal-to-noise ratios SNR of 120–140 dBc). A brief overview of the fabrication technology for highly integrated JAWS circuits with more than 50 000 junctions per chip will be described. This includes the stacked junction technology with up to 5-stacked junctions. The experimental setup and the key-features of JAWS will be shown too. New approaches designed to further increase the output voltage, to simplify the experimental setup, and to extend the range of applications are the on-chip power dividers, the optical pulse drive, and the RF-JAWS. A selected application of the JAWS is described to demonstrate the usability of sophisticated JAWS waveforms for the complex characterization of electrical devices. The PTB JAWS circuits already have a significant impact on the quantum ac voltage metrology community. JAWS chips made at PTB have been distributed to more than 10 national metrology and other research institutes within the framework of international research projects.

Ralf Behr, Oliver Kieler, Detlef Schleubner +2 more

We present the combination of two Josephson waveform synthesizers to generate waveforms with low harmonic distortion [below$-$110 dBc (carrier)] and amplitudes above the 1-V level. Fast and flexible code programming enables pulse-driven Josephson arrays to synthesize arbitrary waveforms. We have used the pulse-driven system to cancel the harmonic content from the binary array that can reach 1-V amplitudes. The quantum nature of the Josephson synthesizer ensures very stable amplitudes (better than$6 \times 10^{-8}$) and no frequency drift. This performance, together with the ability to synthesize arbitrary waveforms, can make this synthesizer a relevant tool for characterizing precision electronics and ac voltage metrology.