Josephson parametric amplifier with Chebyshev gain profile and high saturation

Ryan Kaufman
Mark Dykman
Andrea Iorio
George Sterling
Alex Opremcak
Lara Faoro
Tim Burger
Robert Gasca
Physical Review Applied, 20 (2023), pp. 054058

Abstract

We demonstrate a Josephson parametric amplifier design with a band-pass impedance matching network based on a third-order Chebyshev prototype. We measured eight amplifiers operating at 4.6~GHz that exhibit gains of 20~dB with less than 1~dB gain ripple and up to 500~MHz bandwidth. The amplifiers further achieve high input saturation powers around $-93$~dBm based on the use of rf-SQUID arrays as their nonlinear element. We characterize the amplifiers' readout efficiency and their signal-to-noise ratio near saturation using a Sycamore processor. In addition, we measure the amplifiers intermodulation distortion in two-tone experiments as a function of input power and inter-tone detuning, and observe excess distortion at small detuning with a pronounced dip as a function of signal power, which we interpret in terms of power-dependent dielectric losses.

Research Areas