Non-degenerate Pumping of Superconducting Resonator Parametric Amplifier with Evidence of Phase-Sensitive Amplification

Journal article

Superconducting resonator parametric amplifiers are potentially important components for a wide variety of fundamental physics experiments and utilitarian applications. We propose and realise an operating scheme that achieves amplification through the use of non-degenerate pumps, which addresses two key challenges in the design of parametric amplifiers: non-continuous gain across the amplification band and pump tone removal. We have experimentally demonstrated the non-degenerate pumping scheme using a half-wave resonator amplifier based on NbN thin-film, and measured a peak gain of 26 dB and 3-dB bandwidth of 0.5 MHz. The two non-degenerate pump tones were positioned ∼10 bandwidths above and below the frequency at which peak gain occurs. We have found the non-degenerate pumping scheme to be more stable compared to the usual degenerate pumping scheme in terms of gain drift over time, by a factor of 4. This scheme also retains the usual flexibility of NbN resonator parametric amplifiers in terms of reliable amplification in a ∼4 K environment, and is suitable for cross-harmonic amplification. The use of pump tones at different frequencies allows phase-sensitive amplification when the signal tone is degenerate with the idler tone. A gain of 23 dB and squeezing ratio of 6 dB were measured.

Authors: Zhao, S; Withington, S; Thomas, CN

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer
• Journal: Journal of Low Temperature Physics
• Volume: 222
• Issue: 2
• Article number: 68
• Publication date: 2026-04-09
• Acceptance date: 2026-03-27
• DOI: 10.1007/s10909-026-03407-6
• EISSN: 1573-7357
• ISSN: 0022-2291
• Language: English
• Keywords: Kinetic inductance; Parametric amplifiers; Squeezing; Phase-sensitive amplification; Superconducting resonators