Performance Improvements for the NIST 1 V Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizer

Published

November 10, 2014

Author(s)

Samuel P. Benz, Steven B. Waltman, Anna E. Fox, Paul D. Dresselhaus, Alain Rufenacht, Logan A. Howe, Robert E. Schwall, Nathan E. Flowers-Jacobs

Abstract

The performance of the NIST Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizer has been improved such that it generates a root-mean-square (RMS) output voltage of 1 V with an operating current range greater than 2 mA. Our previous 1 V JAWS circuit achieved this same maximum voltage over a current range of 0.4 mA by operating every Josephson junction in its second quantum state. The newest circuit synthesizes 1 V waveforms with the junctions operating in the first quantum state. The voltage per array is doubled because the number of junctions in each array was able to be doubled through the use of improved microwave circuit designs that increased the bias uniformity to the junctions. We describe the circuit improvements and device operation, and we demonstrate the system capabilities by showing measured spectra of a 1 Hz sine wave and a dual-tone waveform. With only two arrays of the new circuit, we also synthesized a 128 mV sine wave without a compensation bias signal, which is one of the bias signals required for achieving 1 V. This is the same RMS output voltage achieved with the previous circuit using four arrays.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Volume

25

Issue

3

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2014.2364137

Keywords

Digital-analog conversion, Josephson arrays, Quantization, Signal synthesis, Standards, Superconducting integrated circuits, Voltage measurement.

Citation

Benz, S. , Waltman, S. , Fox, A. , Dresselhaus, P. , Rufenacht, A. , Howe, L. , Schwall, R. and Flowers-Jacobs, N. (2014), Performance Improvements for the NIST 1 V Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizer, IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2014.2364137 (Accessed October 8, 2025)