High quality superconducting Nb co-planar resonators on sapphire substrate

TL;DR

This paper investigates superconducting Nb coplanar waveguide resonators on sapphire at millikelvin temperatures, revealing low surface resistance and loss mechanisms dominated by two-level systems, with implications for quantum device performance.

Contribution

It provides detailed measurements and simulations of Nb coplanar resonators, demonstrating their low residual resistance and identifying two-level systems as the main loss source at low temperatures.

Findings

Residual surface resistance comparable to bulk Nb cavities

Resonator quality dominated by BCS quasiparticles at high T

Two-level systems cause significant loss at low T

Abstract

We present measurements and simulations of superconducting Nb co-planar waveguide resonators on sapphire substrate down to millikelvin temperature range with different readout powers. In the high temperature regime, we demonstrate that the Nb film residual surface resistance is comparable to that observed in the ultra-high quality, bulk Nb 3D superconducting radio frequency cavities while the resonator quality is dominated by the BCS thermally excited quasiparticles. At low temperature both the resonator quality factor and frequency can be well explained using the two-level system models. Through the energy participation ratio simulations, we find that the two-level system loss tangent is $\sim 10^{-2}$, which agrees quite well with similar studies performed on the Nb 3D cavities.