Patrick Winkel

Onset of phase diffusion in high kinetic inductance granular aluminum micro-SQUIDs

  1. Felix Friedrich,
  2. Patrick Winkel,
  3. Kiril Borisov,
  4. Hannes Seeger,
  5. Christoph Sürgers,
  6. Ioan M. Pop,
  7. and Wolfgang Wernsdorfer
Superconducting granular aluminum is attracting increasing interest due to its high kinetic inductance and low dissipation, favoring its use in kinetic inductance particle detectors,
superconducting resonators or quantum bits. We perform switching current measurements on DC-SQUIDs, obtained by introducing two identical geometric constrictions in granular aluminum rings of various normal-state resistivities in the range from ρn=250μΩcm to 5550μΩcm. The relative high kinetic inductance of the SQUID loop, in the range of tens of nH, leads to a suppression of the modulation in the measured switching current versus magnetic flux, accompanied by a distortion towards a triangular shape. We observe a change in the temperature dependence of the switching current histograms with increasing normal-state film resistivity. This behavior suggests the onset of a diffusive motion of the superconducting phase across the constrictions in the two-dimensional washboard potential of the SQUIDs, which could be caused by a change of the local electromagnetic environment of films with increasing normal-state resistivities.
arxiv pdf

Granular aluminum: A superconducting material for high impedance quantum circuits

  1. Lukas Grünhaupt,
  2. Martin Spiecker,
  3. Daria Gusenkova,
  4. Nataliya Maleeva,
  5. Sebastian T. Skacel,
  6. Ivan Takmakov,
  7. Francesco Valenti,
  8. Patrick Winkel,
  9. Hannes Rotzinger,
  10. Alexey V. Ustinov,
  11. and Ioan M. Pop
Superconducting quantum information processing machines are predominantly based on microwave circuits with relatively low characteristic impedance, of about 100 Ohm, and small anharmonicity,
which can limit their coherence and logic gate fidelity. A promising alternative are circuits based on so-called superinductors, with characteristic impedances exceeding the resistance quantum RQ=6.4 kΩ. However, previous implementations of superinductors, consisting of mesoscopic Josephson junction arrays, can introduce unintended nonlinearity or parasitic resonant modes in the qubit vicinity, degrading its coherence. Here we present a fluxonium qubit design using a granular aluminum (grAl) superinductor strip. Granular aluminum is a particularly attractive material, as it self-assembles into an effective junction array with a remarkably high kinetic inductance, and its fabrication can be in-situ integrated with standard aluminum circuit processing. The measured qubit coherence time TR2 up to 30 μs illustrates the potential of grAl for applications ranging from protected qubit designs to quantum limited amplifiers and detectors.
arxiv pdf