Cryogenic Characterization of a Superconductor Quantum-Based Microwave Reference Source for Communications and Quantum Information

Published

October 13, 2021

Author(s)

Alirio De Jesus Soares Boaventura, Justus Brevik, Dylan Williams, Nathan Flowers-Jacobs, Manuel Castellanos Beltran, Anna Fox, Pete Hopkins, Paul Dresselhaus, Samuel P. Benz

Abstract

We are developing a new instrument, the RF Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizer (RF-JAWS), for communications metrology and quantum information applications. An important aspect of the RF-JAWS design is the accurate and traceable characterization of its superconducting devices. In this article, we present a procedure for characterizing microwave superconducting devices in a cryogenic RF probe station via a vector network analyzer (VNA) calibrated with a custom cryogenic calibration kit colocated with the superconducting device under test (DUT) in the cryogenic environment. By de-embedding lossy and dispersive RF interconnects linking the superconducting DUT to the measurement apparatus at room temperature, we characterize the DUT exactly at the cryogenic on-wafer reference plane. More importantly, we operate our VNA with an external modulated source and our procedure features metrology-grade multiline thru-reflect-line calibration and absolute power and phase corrections, as opposed to the more common relative scattering-parameter correction. In addition, we apply an X -parameter model to account for impedance mismatch in cryogenic Josephson microwave sources. Our techniques are also suitable for cryogenic characterization of microwave superconducting devices for solid-state quantum computers and could help to optimize the quantum-classical interfaces in these systems.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Volume

31

Issue

9

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2021.3117610

Local Download

Keywords

superconductive circuits, cryogenic microwave measurements, TRL calibration, Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizer, quantum voltage standard, X-parameter model

Citation

Soares Boaventura, A. , Brevik, J. , Williams, D. , Flowers-Jacobs, N. , Castellanos Beltran, M. , Fox, A. , Hopkins, P. , Dresselhaus, P. and Benz, S. (2021), Cryogenic Characterization of a Superconductor Quantum-Based Microwave Reference Source for Communications and Quantum Information, IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2021.3117610, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=931498 (Accessed October 21, 2025)