Superconducting Josephson-based metamaterials for quantum-limited parametric amplification: a review

TL;DR

This review discusses the physics, models, and applications of Josephson junction-based metamaterials for quantum-limited parametric amplification, highlighting their potential in quantum information, metrology, and fundamental physics.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of different schemes and theoretical models for Josephson-based metamaterials used in quantum-limited parametric amplification.

Findings

Different schemes exploit Josephson nonlinearity for signal mixing.

Three theoretical models predict system dynamics under 4-Wave Mixing.

Results show comparable amplification performance under the undepleted pump assumption.

Abstract

In the last few years, several groups have proposed and developed their own platforms demonstrating quantum-limited linear parametric amplification, with evident applications in quantum information and computation, electrical and optical metrology, radio astronomy and basic physics concerning axion detection. Here we propose a short review on the physics behind parametric amplification via metamaterials composed by coplanar wave-guides embedding several Josephson junctions. We present and compare different schemes that exploit the nonlinearity of the Josephson current-phase relation to mix the so-called signal, idler and pump tones. The chapter then presents and compares three different theoretical models, developed in the last few years, to predict the dynamics of these nonlinear systems in the particular case of a 4-Wave Mixing process and under the degenerate undepleted pump assumption. We will demonstrate that, under the same assumption, all the results are comparable in terms of amplification of the output fields.