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arXiv:cond-mat/9805239 · Applied Physics Letters

Microwave near-field imaging of electric fields in a superconducting microstrip resonator

Ashfaq S. Thanawalla, S. K. Dutta, C. P. Vlahacos, D. E. Steinhauer, B. J. Feenstra, Steven M. Anlage, F. C. Wellstood, Robert B. Hammond

Published Oct 26, 1998• 25 citations
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Abstract

We describe the use of a cryogenic near-field scanning microwave microscope to image microwave electric fields from superconducting and normal-metal microstrip resonators. The microscope employs an open-ended coaxial probe and operates from 77 to 300 K in the 0.01–20 GHz frequency range with a spatial resolution of about 200 μm. We describe the operation of the system and present microwave images of Cu and Tl2Ba2CaCu2O8 microstrip resonators, showing standing wave patterns at the fundamental and second harmonic frequencies.

DOI
10.1063/1.122492

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We describe the use of a cryogenic near-field scanning microwave microscope to image microwave electric fields from superconducting and normal-metal microstrip resonators. The microscope employs an open-ended coaxial probe and operates from 77 to 300 K in the 0.01–20 GHz frequency range with a spatial resolution of about 200 μm. We describe the operation of the system and present microwave images of Cu and Tl2Ba2CaCu2O8 microstrip resonators, showing standing wave patterns at the fundamental and second harmonic frequencies.
Nonlinearities give rise to intermodulation distortion in superconducting microwave devices and currently limit their use to low power applications. We have developed a cryogenic imaging technique to spatially resolve intermodulation distortion and used it to image an 8.2 GHz high temperature superconducting Tl2Ba2CaCu2O8 microwave resonator. The images reveal that the fundamental and intermodulation electric fields obey a fixed relation throughout the device. We note that further refinements of intermodulation theory in resonant devices may be required to fully describe the data.
We report on the design and performance of a cryogenic (300 mK) near-field scanning microwave microscope. It uses a microwave resonator as the near-field sensor, operating at a frequency of 6 GHz and microwave probing amplitudes down to 100 μV, approaching low enough photon population (N ∼ 1000) of the resonator such that coherent quantum manipulation becomes feasible. The resonator is made out of a miniaturized distributed fractal superconducting circuit that is integrated with the probing tip, micromachined to be compact enough such that it can be mounted directly on a quartz tuning-fork, and used for parallel operation as an atomic force microscope (AFM). The resonator is magnetically coupled to a transmission line for readout, and to achieve enhanced sensitivity we employ a Pound-Drever-Hall measurement scheme to lock to the resonance frequency. We achieve a well localized near-field around the tip such that the microwave resolution is comparable to the AFM resolution, and a capacitive sensitivity down to 6.4 × 10(-20) F/Hz, limited by mechanical noise. We believe that the results presented here are a significant step towards probing quantum systems at the nanoscale using near-field scanning microwave microscopy.
Low temperature scanning electron microscopy (LTSEM) offers the possibility for spatially resolved investigations of microwave properties of single Josephson junctions, superconducting striplines, resonators, and complex cryoelectric circuits during their operation. The spatial resolution of about 1 μm is at least two orders of magnitude better than the typical wavelength (≳100 μm in the elements) in the frequency range of interest (50–500 GHz). We demonstrate that LTSEM is a well suited tool for the experimental investigation of superconducting microwave devices and cryoelectronic circuits.
Superconducting microcircuits and metamaterials are promising candidates for use in new generation cryogenic electronics. Their functionality is largely justified by the macroscopic distribution of electromagnetic fields in arranged unit cells, rather than by the microscopic properties of composite materials. We present a new method for visualizing the spatial structure of penetrating microwaves with microscopic resolution in planar superconducting macroscopic resonators as the most important circuit-forming elements of modern microelectronics. This method uses a low-temperature laser scanning microscope that examines the phase (i.e., direction) and amplitude of local radio-frequency currents versus the two-dimensional coordinates of the superconducting resonant structure under test. Phase-sensitive contrast is achieved by synchronizing the intensity-modulated laser radiation with the resonant harmonics of the microwave signal passing through the sample. In this case, the laser-beam-induced loss in the illuminated area will strongly depend on the local phase difference between the RF carrier signal and the spatially temporal structure of the focused laser oscillation. This approach eliminates the hardware limitations of the existing technique of radio-frequency microscopy and brings the phase-sensitive demodulation mode to the level necessary for studying the physics of superconducting metamaterials. The advantage of the presented method over the previous method of RF laser scanning micros-copy is demonstrated by the example of the formation of standing waves in a spiral superconducting Archimedean resonator up to the 38th eigenmode resonance.
Low temperature scanning laser microscopy (LTSLM) is demonstrated to be capable of imaging sub-THz electromagnetic fields in cryoelectronic integrated structures. This method allows one to evaluate the spatial distribution of time-averaged field amplitudes with a resolution of about one micrometer for samples with characteristic dimensions of order millimeters. Using LTSLM, cryoelectronic devices with both passive and active superconducting elements can be characterized. Local heating of superconducting structures by a laser beam introduces extra loss for the propagating and standing sub-millimeter waves. We present LTSLM images of two-dimensional 400 to 500 standing GHz wave patterns in integrated superconducting receiver chips.
Abstract We demonstrate the operation of superconducting coplanar microwave resonators in a very large frequency range up to 50 GHz. The resonators are fabricated from niobium thin films on sapphire substrates and have fundamental frequencies of 5 GHz or 10 GHz. We study numerous harmonics of the resonators at temperatures between 1.5 K and 6 K, and we determine quality factors of up to 22 600 at 1.5 K. As an example for spectroscopy applications of such resonators we detect the superconducting transition of a bulk tin sample at multiple probing frequencies.