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IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS)

Tunable Microwave Radiation Pulse Generation by Excitation of Superconducting Closed-Loop Antennas

Timothy J. Haugan, Thomas J. Bullard, John Patrick Murphy, John S. Bulmer, Manuel R. Ferdinandus

Published Jun 24, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An electromagnetic transmitter typically consists of in dividual components such as a power supply, a pulsing source, oscillator, waveguide, and antenna. In this work we circumvent complications associated with connecting these individual components and instead combine them into a nontraditional, photonic enabled, compact transmitter device for pulse-capable and tunable, microwave radiation. This device is presently a centimeter scale, continuous, thin film superconducting ring supporting a persistent super-current charged by induction. An ultrafast laser pulse (required) illuminates the ring (either at a point or uniformly around the ring) and perturbs the super-current by the de-pairing and recombination of Copper pairs. This generates a microwave pulse where both ring and laser pulse properties dictates the radiated spectrum's shape. The transmitting device is self-contained and isolated from conductive components that are observed to interfere with the generated signal. A rich spectrum is observed that extends beyond 30 GHz (equipment limited) and illustrates the complex super-current dynamics bridging optical, THz, and microwave wavelengths.

DOI
10.1109/icops35962.2018.9575271

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An electromagnetic transmitter typically consists of in dividual components such as a power supply, a pulsing source, oscillator, waveguide, and antenna. In this work we circumvent complications associated with connecting these individual components and instead combine them into a nontraditional, photonic enabled, compact transmitter device for pulse-capable and tunable, microwave radiation. This device is presently a centimeter scale, continuous, thin film superconducting ring supporting a persistent super-current charged by induction. An ultrafast laser pulse (required) illuminates the ring (either at a point or uniformly around the ring) and perturbs the super-current by the de-pairing and recombination of Copper pairs. This generates a microwave pulse where both ring and laser pulse properties dictates the radiated spectrum's shape. The transmitting device is self-contained and isolated from conductive components that are observed to interfere with the generated signal. A rich spectrum is observed that extends beyond 30 GHz (equipment limited) and illustrates the complex super-current dynamics bridging optical, THz, and microwave wavelengths.
An electromagnetic transmitter typically consists of individual components such as a waveguide, antenna, power supply, and an oscillator. In this communication we circumvent complications associated with connecting these individual components and instead combine them into a non-traditional, photonic enabled, compact transmitter device for tunable, ultrawide band (UWB) radiation. This device is a centimeter scale, continuous, thin film superconducting ring supporting a persistent super-current. An ultrafast laser pulse (required) illuminates the ring (either at a point or uniformly around the ring) and perturbs the super-current by the de-pairing and recombination of Cooper pairs. This generates a microwave pulse where both ring and laser pulse geometry dictates the radiated spectrum's shape. The transmitting device is self contained and completely isolated from conductive components that are observed to interfere with the generated signal. A rich spectrum is observed that extends beyond 30 GHz (equipment limited) and illustrates the complex super-current dynamics bridging optical, THz, and microwave wavelengths.
In this licentiate thesis design, fabrication, and measurements of tunable superconducting microwave transmission line resonators are described. The resonators are of quarter wavelength type were the tuning is achieved by changing one of the boundary conditions of the resonator through a tunable impedance. As tunable impedance the Josephson inductance in form of SQUIDs is used. The Josephson inductance can then be tuned by applying a magnetic field to the SQUID loop. A tuning range of 750 MHz for a 5 GHz resonator is achieved, and as a figure of merit it can be tuned over 200 line widths. The purpose of the tunable resonators is to use them for dynamic coupling of superconducting quantum bits, this requires that the resonators can be tuned fast on the timescale of the resonator-qubit coupling. To measure tuning speeds faster then the ring up time of the resonators a method that measures the leakage of energy out of a detuned resonator was developed. With this method a frequency shift of the energy stored in the resonator can be measured. A detuning of 330 MHz in less than 10 ns is demonstrated for a 4.5 GHz resonator with a quality factor of 104^44. Working in the few photon limit indicates that the devices can be used to change the frequency of individual photons, this is however still to be demonstrated. As a part of this work the dressed states of a superconducting charge qubit was also studied.
We have examined a theory of the microwave electrodynamics of superconducting films driven far from equilibrium by laser radiation and have found that low laser powers can dramatically change the propagation characteristics of wave guiding devices operating at centimeter through submillimeter wavelengths. At low temperatures, the attenuation of a superconducting stripline can be enhanced by orders of magnitude at frequencies near twice the energy gap. The phase velocity of microwaves well below the pair-splitting frequency can also be dramatically changed. These changes are predicted to be achievable on subnanosecond time scales when the driving laser fields are pulsed. Such behavior offers device applications as microwave intensity modulators and phase shifters.
In this thesis I present different types of manipulations of microwave fields using tunable superconducting resonators. A resonator is made tunable by adding one or more superconducting quantum interference devices, SQUIDs. The SQUID consists of a superconducting loop with two Josephson junctions and acts as a tunable nonlinear inductor. Modulation of the SQUID nonlinearity can be performed to induce different types of non-trivial oscillator dynamics. The first project I present is on subharmonic oscillations. Here, the SQUID in a tunable resonator is driven with an external signal at an integer multiple of the frequency w. When w is placed slightly below the first resonator mode, I show generation of radiation at w, which is known as frequency down-conversion. In my measurements, subharmonic oscillations have been detected from period doubling up to period quintupling. For the specific case of period tripling, theory is developed and I show good agreement between theory and experiments. The second project of the thesis is on a doubly tunable resonator. Here, I show creation of a superconducting resonator with two independently tunable boundary conditions. The idea with this system is to operate the resonator in a breathing or a translational mode and compare the two. For static dc magnetic flux the performance is very good. As a second step, I perform fast modulation of both SQUIDs to generate radiation. Even though some of the measurement results are promising, I also show some contradicting observations. These indicate that the actual modulation mechanism of the SQUID is not pumping of the magnetic flux in the SQUID loop as intended, but rather direct current driving of the SQUID. However, the system remains a promising idea for microwave manipulation and creation of interesting non-classical states. As a possible application of the doubly tunable resonator, I present a theory proposal on how to use it for measurements on relativistic effects. By using the tunability of the resonator boundary conditions, the resonator can simulate a space rocket and time dilation could be measured. However, due to the crosstalk problems in the doubly tunable resonator this experiment was never realized. Finally, I finish the thesis by presenting a design for a tunable microwave coupling. Papers E and F show a high on-off ratio for the coupler and demonstrate how it can be used for storage of microwave signals. Furthermore, the tunable coupler can be used to shape a microwave signal by tuning the strength of the coupling.
Using high temperature superconducting thin films, we designed and fabricated Josephson junctions associated with a log-periodic toothed trapezoid antenna. Microwave self-radiation from the Josephson junction was measured by using both a superheterodyne receiver at the center frequency of 22 GHz and an external waveguide system. In the case of junction incorporated with an antenna structure, there was a significant increase of power by an order of magnitude with respect to a junction without antenna. Under the 22 GHz irradiation, we observed distinctive Shapiro steps in the I-V measurement, which allowed as estimating the received power of the junction. The received power of the junction with an antenna exhibited as a large increase as that of a self-radiation. Our results indicate that a Josephson junction with an antenna is very effective for the microwave coupling between Josephson junction and free space. The combined device can be used either for a high power microwave source or for a high sensitive sensor.
When a thin-film ring with supercurrent is irradiated by coherent microwave field, the field induces coherent oscillations of all the Cooper pairs involved in the supercurrent. The oscillating charged condensate will emit photons with energies determined by the difference of quantized energy levels of the superconducting ring. This effect can be observed only in the rings, the thickness of which is less than both the field skin-depth and the London penetration depth. The probability of the microwave field-induced single-photon and two-photon emission is calculated. The energy - angle distributions of the emitted photons as a function of both the ring sizes and the fluxoid number trapped in the ring, are explored.