A model study of present-day Hall-effect circulators

TL;DR

This study models the performance of a Hall-effect microwave circulator using a capacitive-coupling model, predicting high impedance and bandwidth limitations, and suggests improvements at lower magnetic fields.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical analysis of the circulator's performance based on conductance data, confirming and extending prior experimental findings with model predictions.

Findings

High impedance (~kΩ) at magnetic fields >1.5T

Bandwidth limited by impedance mismatch and can be improved at lower fields

Parasitic capacitance can induce countercirculation effects

Abstract

Stimulated by the recent implementation of a three-port Hall-effect microwave circulator of Mahoney et al. (MEA), we present model studies of the performance of this device. Our calculations are based on the capacitive-coupling model of Viola and DiVincenzo (VD). Based on conductance data from a typical Hall-bar device obtained from a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in a magnetic field, we numerically solve the coupled field-circuit equations to calculate the expected performance of the circulator, as determined by the $S$ parameters of the device when coupled to 50$\Omega$ ports, as a function of frequency and magnetic field. Above magnetic fields of 1.5T, for which a typical 2DEG enters the quantum Hall regime (corresponding to a Landau-level filling fraction $\nu$ of 20), the Hall angle $\theta_H=\tan^{-1}\sigma_{xy}/\sigma_{xx}$ always remains close to $90^\circ$, and the $S$ parameters are close to the analytic predictions of VD for $\theta_H=\pi/2$. As anticipated by VD, MEA find the device to have rather high (k$\Omega$) impedance, and thus to be extremely mismatched to $50\Omega$, requiring the use of impedance matching. We incorporate the lumped matching circuits of MEA in our modeling and confirm that they can produce excellent circulation, although confined to a very small bandwidth. We predict that this bandwidth is significantly improved by working at lower magnetic field when the Landau index is high, e.g. $\nu=20$, and the impedance mismatch is correspondingly less extreme. Our modeling also confirms the observation of MEA that parasitic port-to-port capacitance can produce very interesting countercirculation effects.