Granular Aluminum Parametric Amplifier for Low-Noise Measurements in Tesla Fields

TL;DR

This paper introduces a granular aluminum-based parametric amplifier that maintains low-noise performance and high gain in strong magnetic fields up to 1 Tesla, addressing limitations of traditional Josephson junction amplifiers.

Contribution

The authors develop a magnetic field resilient, granular aluminum resonator-based amplifier with near-quantum-limited noise performance for applications in high magnetic field environments.

Findings

Achieves 20 dB gain near quantum limit

Operates in magnetic fields up to 1 Tesla

Provides a gain-bandwidth product of 28 MHz

Abstract

Josephson junction parametric amplifiers have become essential tools for microwave quantum circuit readout with minimal added noise. Even after improving at an impressive rate in the last decade, they remain vulnerable to magnetic field, which limits their use in many applications such as spin qubits, Andreev and molecular magnet devices, dark matter searches, etc. Kinetic inductance materials, such as granular aluminum (grAl), offer an alternative source of non-linearity with innate magnetic field resilience. We present a non-degenerate amplifier made of two coupled grAl resonators resilient to in-plane magnetic field up to 1 T. It offers 20 dB of gain close to the quantum limit of added noise, with a gain-bandwidth product of 28 MHz and -110 dBm input saturation power.