We continue detailed study of microwave properties of a superconducting left-handed tunable CPW transmission line (LHTL). The line consists of a central conductor, loaded with seriesof Josephson junctions as fixed inductors; the line is shunted with SQUIDs as tunable inductors. The inductance of the SQUIDs is varied in the range of 0.08-0.5 nH by applying an external dc magnetic field. The circuit is designed to have left- and right-handed transmission bands separated by a variable rejection band. At zero magnetic field, we observed only one pass-band between 8 and 10 GHz within the frequency range of 8-12 GHz. The rejection band is anticipated to appear between 10 GHz and 11 GHz by design, and it has been detected in our previous work. To solve the problem of standing waves and RF leak in measurements of our experimental 20-cell LHTL, we have designed a high-ratio (5-50 Ohm) wideband (8-11 GHz) impedance transformer integrated at the chip, along with improved sample holder. The experimental data are compared with numerical simulations.
We present a practical design and implementation of a broadband sample holder suitable for microwave experiments with superconducting integrated circuits at millikelvin temperatures.Proposed design can be easily integrated in standard dilution cryostats, has flat pass band response in a frequency range from 0 to 32 GHz, allowing the RF testing of the samples with substrate size up to 4×4 mm. The parasitic higher modes interference in the holder structure is analyzed and prevented via design considerations. The developed setup can be used for characterization of superconducting parametric amplifiers, bolometers and qubits. We tested the designed sample holder by characterizing of a superconducting flux qubit at 20 mK temperature.