Identifying capacitive and inductive loss in lumped element superconducting hybrid titanium nitride/aluminum resonators
We present a method to systematically locate and extract capacitive and
inductive losses in superconducting resonators at microwave frequencies by use
of mixed-material, lumped element devices. In these devices, ultra-low loss
titanium nitride was progressively replaced with aluminum in the
inter-digitated capacitor and meandered inductor elements. By measuring the
power dependent loss at 50 mK as the Al-TiN fraction in each element is
increased, we find that at low electric field, i.e. in the single photon limit,
the loss is two level system in nature and is correlated with the amount of Al
capacitance rather than the Al inductance. In the high electric field limit,
the remaining loss is linearly related to the product of the Al area times its
inductance and is likely due to quasiparticles generated by stray radiation. At
elevated temperature, additional loss is correlated with the amount of Al in
the inductance, with a power independent TiN-Al interface loss term that
exponentially decreases as the temperature is reduced. The TiN-Al interface
loss is vanishingly small at the 50 mK base temperature.