- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine
Access Provided by Xinjiang University

Physical Review Applied

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Access by Xinjiang University

Low-noise microwave parametric amplifier based on self-heated nonlinear impedance with subnanosecond thermal response

Marco Will1,2, Mohammad Tasnimul Haque1,2, Yuvraj Chaudhry1,2, Dmitry Golubev2,†, and Pertti Hakonen1,2,*

  • 1Low Temperature Laboratory, Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University, P.O. Box 15100, Espoo FI-00076, Finland
  • 2QTF Centre of Excellence, Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University, P.O. Box 15100, Aalto FI-00076, Finland

  • *Contact author: pertti.hakonen@aalto.fi
  • †Present address: HQS Quantum Simulations GmbH,\break Karlsruhe, Germany.
PDF

Phys. Rev. Applied 23, 014037 – Published 17 January, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.23.014037

Abstract

Low-noise amplifiers are of great significance in the field of quantum technologies. We study a thermally driven parametric amplifier based on a superconductor-insulator-graphene-insulator-superconductor (S-I-G-I-S) junction coupled to a superconducting microwave cavity. The strong nonlinearity in the temperature dependence of our device leads to thermal self-modulation that produces impedance oscillations at frequencies around twice the angular cavity resonance frequency ωr. In particular, reactance modulation of the effective capacitance yields a gain of 18.6 dB over a frequency span of 125 kHz with a minimum noise temperature of TN=1.4K. Our theoretical modeling gives insight into the exact mixing processes, confirmation of the electron-phonon coupling parameter and possible improvements of the studied system.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (55)

  1. E. Pop, V. Varshney, and A. K. Roy, Thermal properties of graphene: Fundamentals and applications, MRS Bull. 37, 1273 (2012).
  2. A. Fay, R. Danneau, J. K. Viljas, F. Wu, M. Y. Tomi, J. Wengler, M. Wiesner, and P. J. Hakonen, Shot noise and conductivity at high bias in bilayer graphene: Signatures of electron-optical phonon coupling, Phys. Rev. B 84, 245427 (2011).
  3. M. W. Graham, S.-F. Shi, D. C. Ralph, J. Park, and P. L. McEuen, Photocurrent measurements of supercollision cooling in graphene, Nat. Phys. 9, 103 (2012).
  4. K. C. Fong and K. C. Schwab, Ultrasensitive and wide-bandwidth thermal measurements of graphene at low temperatures, Phys. Rev. X 2, 031006 (2012).
  5. A. C. Betz, F. Vialla, D. Brunel, C. Voisin, M. Picher, A. Cavanna, A. Madouri, G. Fève, J.-M. Berroir, B. Plaçais, and E. Pallecchi, Hot electron cooling by acoustic phonons in graphene, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 056805 (2012).
  6. M. A. Aamir, J. N. Moore, X. Lu, P. Seifert, D. Englund, K. C. Fong, and D. K. Efetov, Ultrasensitive calorimetric measurements of the electronic heat capacity of graphene, Nano Lett. 21, 5330 (2021).
  7. B. S. Karasik, A. V. Sergeev, and D. E. Prober, Nanobolometers for THz photon detection, IEEE Trans. Terahertz Sci. Technol. 1, 97 (2011).
  8. S. Lara-Avila, A. Danilov, D. Golubev, H. He, K. H. Kim, R. Yakimova, F. Lombardi, T. Bauch, S. Cherednichenko, and S. Kubatkin, Towards quantum-limited coherent detection of terahertz waves in charge-neutral graphene, Nat. Astron. 3, 983 (2019).
  9. R. Bistritzer and A. MacDonald, Electronic cooling in graphene, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 206410 (2009).
  10. S. S. Kubakaddi, Interaction of massless Dirac electrons with acoustic phonons in graphene at low temperatures, Phys. Rev. B 79, 75417 (2009).
  11. A. A. Clerk, M. H. Devoret, S. M. Girvin, F. Marquardt, and R. J. Schoelkopf, Introduction to quantum noise, measurement, and amplification, Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 1155 (2010).
  12. J. K. Viljas and T. T. Heikkila, Electron-phonon heat transfer in monolayer and bilayer graphene, Phys. Rev. B 81, 245404 (2010).
  13. J. C. W. Song, M. Y. Reizer, and L. S. Levitov, Disorder-assisted electron-phonon scattering and cooling pathways in graphene, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 106602 (2012).
  14. A. C. Betz, S. H. Jhang, E. Pallecchi, R. Ferreira, G. Fève, J.-M. Berroir, and B. Plaçais, Supercollision cooling in undoped graphene, Nat. Phys. 9, 109 (2012).
  15. A. Laitinen, M. Oksanen, A. Fay, D. Cox, M. Tomi, P. Virtanen, and P. J. Hakonen, Electron–phonon coupling in suspended graphene: Supercollisions by ripples, Nano Lett. 14, 3009 (2014).
  16. P. Virtanen, Energy transport via multiphonon processes in graphene, Phys. Rev. B 89, 245409 (2014).
  17. A. E. Fatimy, P. Han, N. Quirk, L. S. Marie, M. T. Dejarld, R. L. Myers-Ward, K. Daniels, S. Pavunny, D. K. Gaskill, Y. Aytac, T. E. Murphy, and P. Barbara, Effect of defect-induced cooling on graphene hot-electron bolometers, Carbon 154, 497 (2019).
  18. R. Kokkoniemi, J.-P. Girard, D. Hazra, A. Laitinen, J. Govenius, R. E. Lake, I. Sallinen, V. Vesterinen, M. Partanen, J. Y. Tan, K. W. Chan, K. Y. Tan, P. Hakonen, and M. Möttönen, Bolometer operating at the threshold for circuit quantum electrodynamics, Nature 586, 47 (2020).
  19. M. Tomi, M. R. Samatov, A. S. Vasenko, A. Laitinen, P. Hakonen, and D. S. Golubev, Joule heating effects in high-transparency Josephson junctions, Phys. Rev. B 104, 134513 (2021).
  20. L. Kuzmin, K. Likharev, and V. Migulin, Properties of parametric amplifiers using Josephson junctions with external pumping, IEEE Trans. Magn. 15, 454 (1979).
  21. T. Ryhänen, H. Seppä, R. Ilmoniemi, and J. Knuutila, Squid magnetometers for low-frequency applications, J. Low Temp. Phys. 76, 287 (1989).
  22. B. Yurke, P. G. Kaminsky, R. E. Miller, E. A. Whittaker, A. D. Smith, A. H. Silver, and R. W. Simon, Observation of 4.2-K equilibrium-noise squeezing via a Josephson-parametric amplifier, Phys. Rev. Lett. 60, 764 (1988).
  23. T. Yamamoto, K. Inomata, M. Watanabe, K. Matsuba, T. Miyazaki, W. D. Oliver, Y. Nakamura, and J. S. Tsai, Flux-driven Josephson parametric amplifier, Appl. Phys. Lett. 93, 042510 (2008).
  24. N. Bergeal, F. Schackert, M. Metcalfe, R. Vijay, V. E. Manucharyan, L. Frunzio, D. E. Prober, R. J. Schoelkopf, S. M. Girvin, and M. H. Devoret, Phase-preserving amplification near the quantum limit with a Josephson ring modulator, Nature 465, 64 (2010).
  25. T. Elo, T. S. Abhilash, M. R. Perelshtein, I. Lilja, E. V. Korostylev, and P. J. Hakonen, Broadband lumped-element Josephson parametric amplifier with single-step lithography, Appl. Phys. Lett. 114, 152601 (2019).
  26. B. H. Eom, P. K. Day, H. G. LeDuc, J. Zmuidzinas, and A wideband, Low-noise superconducting amplifier with high dynamic range, Nat. Phys. 8, 623 (2012).
  27. M. Perelshtein, K. Petrovnin, V. Vesterinen, S. H. Raja, I. Lilja, M. Will, A. Savin, S. Simbierowicz, R. Jabdaraghi, J. Lehtinen, L. Grönberg, J. Hassel, M. Prunnila, J. Govenius, G. Paraoanu, and P. Hakonen, Broadband continuous-variable entanglement generation using a Kerr-free Josephson metamaterial, Phys. Rev. Appl. 18, 024063 (2022).
  28. M. Esposito, A. Ranadive, L. Planat, S. Leger, D. Fraudet, V. Jouanny, O. Buisson, W. Guichard, C. Naud, J. Aumentado, F. Lecocq, and N. Roch, Observation of two-mode squeezing in a traveling wave parametric amplifier, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 153603 (2022).
  29. J. Y. Qiu, A. Grimsmo, K. Peng, B. Kannan, B. Lienhard, Y. Sung, P. Krantz, V. Bolkhovsky, G. Calusine, D. Kim, A. Melville, B. M. Niedzielski, J. Yoder, M. E. Schwartz, T. P. Orlando, I. Siddiqi, S. Gustavsson, K. P. O’Brien, and W. D. Oliver, Broadband squeezed microwaves and amplification with a Josephson travelling-wave parametric amplifier, Nat. Phys. 19, 706 (2023).
  30. F. Massel, T. T. Heikkilä, J.-M. Pirkkalainen, S. U. Cho, H. Saloniemi, P. J. Hakonen, and M. a Sillanpää, Microwave amplification with nanomechanical resonators, Nature 480, 351 (2011).
  31. P. Lähteenmäki, V. Vesterinen, J. Hassel, H. Seppä, and P. Hakonen, Josephson junction microwave amplifier in self-organized noise compression mode, Sci. Rep. 2, 276 (2012).
  32. S. Jebari, F. Blanchet, A. Grimm, D. Hazra, R. Albert, P. Joyez, D. Vion, D. Estève, F. Portier, and M. Hofheinz, Near-quantum-limited amplification from inelastic cooper-pair tunnelling, Nat. Electron. 1, 223 (2018).
  33. J. Sarkar, K. V. Salunkhe, S. Mandal, S. Ghatak, A. H. Marchawala, I. Das, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, R. Vijay, and M. M. Deshmukh, Quantum-noise-limited microwave amplification using a graphene Josephson junction, Nat. Nanotechnol. 17, 1147 (2022).
  34. G. Butseraen, A. Ranadive, N. Aparicio, K. Rafsanjani Amin, A. Juyal, M. Esposito, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, N. Roch, F. Lefloch, and J. Renard, A gate-tunable graphene Josephson parametric amplifier, Nat. Nanotechnol. 17, 1153 (2022).
  35. D. Phan, P. Falthansl-Scheinecker, U. Mishra, W. Strickland, D. Langone, J. Shabani, and A. Higginbotham, Gate-tunable superconductor-semiconductor parametric amplifier, Phys. Rev. Appl. 19, 064032 (2023).
  36. M. Xu, R. Cheng, Y. Wu, G. Liu, and H. X. Tang, Magnetic field-resilient quantum-limited parametric amplifier, PRX Quantum 4, 010322 (2023).
  37. L. J. Splitthoff, J. J. Wesdorp, M. Pita-Vidal, A. Bargerbos, Y. Liu, and C. K. Andersen, Gate-tunable kinetic inductance parametric amplifier, Phys. Rev. Appl. 21, 014052 (2024).
  38. M. T. Haque, M. Will, A. Zyuzin, D. Golubev, and P. Hakonen, Thermal self-oscillations in monolayer graphene coupled to a superconducting microwave cavity, New J. Phys. 24, 103008 (2022).
  39. E. Segev, B. Abdo, O. Shtempluck, and E. Buks, Thermal instability and self-sustained modulation in superconducting NbN stripline resonators, J. Phys. Condens. Matter 19, 096206 (2007).
  40. D. J. Parker, M. Savytskyi, W. Vine, A. Laucht, T. Duty, A. Morello, A. L. Grimsmo, and J. J. Pla, Degenerate parametric amplification via three-wave mixing using kinetic inductance, Phys. Rev. Appl. 17, 034064 (2022).
  41. The contribution of two level states, if any, is basically included in the graphene dissipation term κG(Te) where they contribute to the maximum quasiparticle resistance as T→0.
  42. R. Adler, A study of locking phenomena in oscillators, Proc. IRE 34, 351 (1946).
  43. W. Wustmann and V. Shumeiko, Parametric effects in circuit quantum electrodynamics, Low Temp. Phys. 45, 848 (2019).
  44. M. Kamada, A. Laitinen, W. Zeng, M. Will, J. Sarkar, K. Tappura, H. Seppä, and P. Hakonen, Electrical low-frequency 1/fγ noise due to surface diffusion of scatterers on an ultra-low-noise graphene platform, Nano Lett. 21, 7637 (2021).
  45. Adsorption of gas changes the resonant frequency of the graphene membrane. This change in frequency can be read out by the thermal amplifier by placing the amplification band on top of the sideband frequency in the optomechanical read out. The matching of the bands can be achieved as the frequency of the graphene membrane is typically in the 10–100 MHz range, which equals the band of thermal self-oscillation frequencies. Furthermore, the amplification band width of approximately 10 MHz is much larger than the line width of the mechanical resonance (<10 kHz), which allows tracking of the mechanical resonance frequency.
  46. Y. Hao, F. Rouxinol, and M. D. LaHaye, Development of a broadband reflective T-filter for voltage biasing high-Q superconducting microwave cavities, Appl. Phys. Lett. 105, 222603 (2014).
  47. N. Kellner, N. Hüttner, M. Will, P. Hakonen, and A. K. Hüttel, Stepwise fabrication and optimization of coplanar waveguide resonator hybrid devices, Phys. Status Solidi (b) 260, 2300187 (2023).
  48. N. R. Werthamer, Nonlinear self-coupling of Josephson radiation in superconducting tunnel junctions, Phys. Rev. 147, 255 (1966).
  49. We have also investigated excitation of the third mode, but the obtained conclusions did not change.
  50. T. Yamamoto, K. Koshino, and Y. Nakamura, in Principles and Methods of Quantum Information Technologies, edited by Y. Yamamoto and K. Semba (Springer Japan, Tokyo, 2016), p. 495..
  51. The capacitance modulation by thermal oscillation was estimated using the calculated curves for ℑ(R/Z) in Fig. 20. We employed results with ν=kBT/Δ≃0.05, close to the value evaluated at the thermal modulation frequency of 2ωp≃11.4 GHz. At T∼1.5K, the derivative of scaled imaginary impedance yields δ(1/ωCeff(T))∼0.04(Tmax−Tmin)R. Using the calculated temperature swing of 1 K at 2ωp (see Fig. 3 in the main text), we obtain for the SIN junction capacitance modulation δCeff≃1.5fF (Ceff≃7fF) when we assume 10% of the total graphene junction resistance for the contact resistance of the S-I-N junction in question. The other S-I-N contact is assumed to have a larger voltage swing, V∼2Δ, imposed across it, which leads to approximately zero cycle average for reactance when traversing the capacitive and inductive parts of ℑ(R/Z) as a function of time. (See Fig. 17.)
  52. T. V. Duzer and C. W. Turner, Principles of Superconductive Devices and Circuits (Prentice Hall PTR, USA, 1998), 2nd ed.
  53. F. Chiodi, M. Ferrier, K. Tikhonov, P. Virtanen, T. T. Heikkilä, M. Feigelman, S. Guéron, and H. Bouchiat, Probing the dynamics of Andreev states in a coherent normal/superconducting ring, Sci. Rep. 1, 3 (2011).
  54. K. S. Tikhonov and M. V. Feigel’man, Admittance of a long diffusive SNS junction, Phys. Rev. B 91, 054519 (2015).
  55. K. K. Likharev, Dynamics of Josephson Junctions and Circuits (Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, London, 1986), p. 614.

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Applied 23, 014037– Published 17 January, 2025
  • Received 24 December 2023
  • Revised 22 August 2024
  • Accepted 26 November 2024
Crossmark - Check for updates button

© 2025 American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation