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Bulletin of the American Physical Society

A Cryogenic Variable Temperature Microwave Noise Source

Slawomir Simbierowicz, Visa Vesterinen, Joshua Milem, Aleksi Lintunen, Mika Oksanen, Leif Roschier, Leif Grönberg, Juha Hassel, David Gunnarsson, Russell E. Lake

Published Mar 16, 2021• 0 citations
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We present a cryogenic microwave noise source with a characteristic impedance of 50 Ω, which can be installed in a coaxial line of a cryostat. The bath temperature of the noise source is continuously variable between 0.1 K and 5 K without causing significant back-action heating on the sample space. As a proof-of-concept experiment, we perform Y-factor measurements of an amplifier cascade that includes a traveling wave parametric amplifier and a commercial high electron mobility transistor amplifier. We observe system noise temperatures as low as 680−200+20 mK at 5.7 GHz corresponding to 1.5−0.7+0.1 excess photons. The system we present has immediate applications in the validation of solid-state qubit readout lines.
The photodetection of ultrashort optical pulse trains has applications in RF and microwave photonics systems that wish to take advantage of the exceptional frequency and timing precision available from optical sources. Room temperature applications include low phase noise microwave generation and sources for very long baseline interferometry, whereas cryogenic applications include driving quantum-based voltage standards and the drive and readout of superconducting qubits. Both room temperature and cryogenic applications of short pulse detection are reviewed.
Microwave devices capable of near-quantum-limited signal processing are essential components in the toolbox of solid-state quantum technologies. The manipulation and readout of single-photon microwave signals through amplifiers, mixers, isolators, etc. must fulfill strict requirements in terms of signal integrity to ensure reliable operation. These active microwave quantum devices operate in complex cryo-electronic setups. This poses challenges to their characterization, since all relevant figures of merit must be expressed at the reference planes of their ports. Even though cryogenic S-parameter calibration is non-trivial, metrological approaches are converging toward rigorous methods. Furthermore, preserving signal integrity must be quantified via absolute noise levels at the ports of the Device Under Test (DUT), requiring an absolute power reference. In this work, we present an in situ noise metrology protocol based on substituting a controllable noise source for the DUT. We motivate this choice by showing that placing the noise source at the DUT input impacts the separability of the calibration from the DUT characteristics. Our proposed architecture combines Planck spectroscopy using a Variable Temperature Stage with Short-Open-Load-Reciprocal scattering-parameter calibration, so that noise and scattering quantities are referred to the same cryogenic reference planes. In this configuration, the readout-chain calibration is separated from the internal dynamics of the DUT. As a demanding use case, we apply the protocol to a Josephson Traveling Wave Parametric Amplifier and extract its gain and input-referred added noise under pump conditions activating multimode nonlinear behavior. This illustrates how our device-agnostic protocol supports portable noise characterization of nonlinear cryogenic microwave devices.