1 V Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizer

Published

September 17, 2014

Author(s)

Samuel P. Benz, Steven B. Waltman, Anna E. Fox, Paul D. Dresselhaus, Alain Rufenacht, Jason M. Underwood, Charles J. Burroughs

Abstract

A quantum-accurate waveform with a root-mean-square (RMS) output amplitude of 1 V has been synthesized for the first time. This four-fold increase in voltage over previous systems was achieved through developments and improvements in bias electronics, pulse-bias techniques, Josephson junction array circuit fabrication and packaging. The recently described ac-coupled bipolar pulse bias technique was used to bias into the second quantum state a superconducting integrated circuit with 25,600 junctions, equally divided into four series-connected arrays. We describe these advancements and present the measured spectra for 1 V, 2 kHz and 1 V, 10 Hz sine waves that remained quantized over a 0.4 mA current range. We also demonstrate a 2 kHz sine wave produced with another bias technique that requires no compensation current and remains quantized at 128 mV RMS voltage over a 1 mA current range. Increasing the clock frequency to 19 GHz also allowed us to achieve a maximum output RMS voltage for a single array of 385 mV.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Volume

25

Issue

1

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2014.2357760

Keywords

Digital-analog conversion, Josephson arrays, Quantization, Signal synthesis, Standards, Superconducting integrated circuits, Voltage measurement.

Citation

Benz, S. , Waltman, S. , Fox, A. , Dresselhaus, P. , Rufenacht, A. , Underwood, J. and Burroughs, C. (2014), 1 V Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizer, IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2014.2357760 (Accessed October 13, 2025)