On-chip superconducting microwave circulator from synthetic rotation

TL;DR

This paper proposes a superconducting on-chip microwave circulator design using dynamically modulated SQUIDs, aiming to replace ferrite circulators with a lossless, integrable solution suitable for quantum microwave experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, integrated superconducting circulator design based on modulated SQUIDs, addressing limitations of traditional ferrite devices.

Findings

Achieves a tunable center frequency of 4-8 GHz

Provides a bandwidth of 240 MHz

Maintains reflections at -20 dB level

Abstract

We analyze the design of a potential replacement technology for the commercial ferrite circulators that are ubiquitous in contemporary quantum superconducting microwave experiments. The lossless, lumped element design is capable of being integrated on chip with other superconducting microwave devices, thus circumventing the many performance-limiting aspects of ferrite circulators. The design is based on the dynamic modulation of DC superconducting microwave quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) that function as nearly linear, tunable inductors. The connection to familiar ferrite-based circulators is a simple frame boost in the internal dynamics' equation of motion. In addition to the general, schematic analysis, we also give an overview of many considerations necessary to achieve a practical design with a tunable center frequency in the 4-8 GHz frequency band, a bandwidth of 240 MHz, reflections at the -20 dB level, and a maximum signal power of approximately order 100 microwave photons per inverse bandwidth.