Design of high compression point josephson junction travelling wave parametric amplifiers for readout of millimetre and sub-millimetre astronomical receivers

Conference item

Supra-THz heterodyne mixers generally have higher conversion loss compared to the millimetre-wave mixers. Hence, the overall receiver noise temperature becomes increasingly dominated by the first-stage semiconductor low noise amplifier (LNA), which still struggles to achieve quantum-limited noise performance. Here, we aim to develop a Josephson junction travelling wave parametric amplifier (JTWPA) that can achieve high gain over broad bandwidth but with better noise performance to replace these Intermediate Frequency (IF) amplifiers. JTWPAs are typically considered not suitable for astronomical receivers due to their low power handling capability. However, the critical current of the Josephson junctions (JJ) can be easily engineered to match the output power of the front-end detectors. Nevertheless, this may results in the requirement of a higher number of JJs as the junction inductance is in reverse relation with the critical current. Therefore, in this paper, we aim to explore the different design parameters required for developing a JTWPA with a dynamic range compatible for readout a Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor (SIS) mixer, as an example. Here, we present two JTWPA models that are suitable for the objective, one requiring 3,142 Nb/Al-AlOx/Nb junctions with a maximum gain of 23 dB, and the other with a lower gain at 16 dB but requires only 1,317 JJs. We then compare the SIS receiver noise performance utilising these JTWPAs with that of using a conventional high gain High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) amplifier. We show that we can improve the receiver sensitivity significantly by either cascading two 23 dB gain JTWPA or using a combination of a 16 dB gain JTWPA and a HEMT amplifier. We conclude that the former option more suitable for large detector array applications as it completely replaces the high heat dissipation HEMT amplifiers; while the latter option is favourable at this stage for low pixel count application as it is easier to fabricate a lower number of junctions JTWPA.

Authors: Navarro Montilla, J; Tan, BK

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers
• Host title: Proceedings of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022
• Volume: 12190
• Article number: 1219030
• Publication date: 2022-08-31
• Acceptance date: 2022-06-29
• Event title: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022
• Event location: Montreal, Canada
• Event website: https://spie.org/conferences-and-exhibitions/astronomical-telescopes-and-instrumentation?SSO=1
• Event start date: 2022-07-17
• Event end date: 2022-07-22
• DOI: 10.1117/12.2628992
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR