Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2023
Volume 68, Number 3
Las Vegas, Nevada (March 5-10)
Virtual (March 20-22); Time Zone: Pacific Time
Session Q39: Superconducting Circuits and Devices
3:00 PM–5:48 PM,
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
Room: Room 231
Sponsoring
Unit:
DMP
Chair: Chris Ciccarino, Stanford University
Abstract: Q39.00009 : Rapid characterization of superconducting microwave resonators using thePound-Drever-Hall technique
5:00 PM–5:12 PM
Presenter:
John Pitten
(University of Colorado, Boulder)
Authors:
John Pitten
(University of Colorado, Boulder)
Jim Phillips
(Zurich Instruments Inc., Waltham, MA 02451)
Brandon Boiko
(FormFactor Inc., Boulder, CO 80301)
Josh Y Mutus
(Rigetti Computing Inc)
Corey Rae H McRae
(University of Colorado, Boulder)
As superconducting qubit coherence times reach an upper bound set by coupling to two-
level system defects in amorphous dielectric substrates, rapid material loss characterization
is needed to achieve significant improvement [1]. Power scans of superconducting microwave
resonators are commonly used to distinguish between loss channels induced in superconduct-
ing qubits and other ancillary low-power superconducting devices, but the standard method
of measurement using a simple vector network analyzer (VNA) frequency sweep is inefficient
and slow — a full characterization of a single device takes days due to the very low power
levels required. The Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) technique, however, can extract the relevant
resonator parameters in a fraction of the time [2, 3]. By sending a carrier signal at the
resonant frequency and frequency modulation sidebands, then measuring power to generate
cross terms, one can create an error signal with a zero crossing exactly at the resonant fre-
quency. A PID controller adjusts the carrier signal until its frequency matches the resonant
frequency. The signal demodulated at twice the modulation frequency is strongly sensitive to
Q, and therefore can be used to measure the loss tangent [3]. Additionally, low power noise
studies of resonators become accessible [4]. In this talk, we demonstrate fast characterization
of TLS loss and show a direct comparison of this technique with the conventional method of
using a VNA.
[1] C. R. H. McRae, H. Wang, J. Gao, M. R. Vissers,
T. Brecht, A. Dunsworth, D. P. Pappas, and J. Mutus,
Materials loss measurements using superconducting mi-
crowave resonators, Review of Scientific Instruments 91,
091101 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0017378.
[2] T. Lindstr ¨om, J. Burnett, M. Oxborrow, and A. Y. Tza-
lenchuk, Pound-locking for characterization of supercon-
ducting microresonators, Review of Scientific Instruments
82, 104706 (2011), https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3648134.
[3] S. E. de Graaf, A. V. Danilov, and S. E. Kubatkin, Ac-
curate real-time monitoring of quality factor and center
frequency of superconducting resonators, IEEE Transac-
tions on Applied Superconductivity 24, 1 (2014).
[4] J. Burnett, High precision readout of superconducting res-
onators: For analysis of slow noise processes, Ph.D. thesis
(2014).
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