- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Applied

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Centimeter-wave quantum-noise-limited resonant superconducting parametric amplifier

V. Gilles*, T. Sweetnam†, B. Mohammadian‡, M.A. McCulloch, and L. Piccirillo

  • *Contact author: valerio.gilles@manchester.ac.uk
  • †Present address: Oxford Quantum Circuits, Reading, United Kingdom.
  • ‡Present address: University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
PDF

Phys. Rev. Applied 25, 054047 – Published 19 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zhzr-bxy1

Abstract

Superconducting parametric amplifiers (SPAs) have seen great interest in recent years due to their high gain and quantum limited noise performance. Among these amplifiers, resonant SPAs have been widely developed for experiments where ultralow-noise narrow-band amplification is of interest, such as the search for axion dark matter in particle physics and the detection of spectroscopic lines in astrophysics, while also finding applications in quantum computing. This work presents an amplifier based on a complementary split-ring resonator, patterned on a NbTi-coated sapphire substrate embedded within a waveguide, designed to work at a set of four narrow frequency bands throughout the K band (18–27 GHz) using the kinetic inductance of the superconducting film. The S-parameters measured at 400 mK, using a sorption cooler, show the four resonances between 23.3 and 26.3 GHz at 1-GHz spacing, with a maximum transmission on resonance of −1 dB. Four-wave mixing has been observed with each resonance, and a maximum signal gain of 30 dB has been measured, corresponding to 29 dB of insertion gain. The noise performance of the amplifier has been measured, showing an added noise of 1.2 half-quanta at 400 mK. These results are relevant to high-frequency axion dark matter experiments and help motivate the exploration of higher frequencies in quantum technologies.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (28)

  1. R. Di Vora, A. Lombardi, A. Ortolan, R. Pengo, G. Ruoso, C. Braggio, G. Carugno, L. Taffarello, G. Cappelli, N. Crescini, et al., Search for galactic axions with a traveling-wave parametric amplifier, Phys. Rev. D 108, 062005 (2023).
  2. C. Bartram, T. Braine, R. Cervantes, N. Crisosto, N. Du, G. Leum, P. Mohapatra, T. Nitta, L. J. Rosenberg, G. Rybka, et al., Dark-matter axion search using a Josephson traveling-wave parametric amplifier, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 94, 044703 (2023).
  3. M. P. Westig and T. M. Klapwijk, Josephson parametric reflection amplifier with integrated directionality, Phys. Rev. Appl. 9, 064010 (2018).
  4. J. Aumentado, Superconducting parametric amplifiers: The state of the art in Josephson parametric amplifiers, IEEE Microw. Mag. 21, 45 (2020).
  5. J. M. Gambetta, J. M. Chow, and M. Steffen, Building logical qubits in a superconducting quantum computing system, npj Quantum Inf. 3, 2 (2017).
  6. B. H. Eom, P. K. Day, H. G. Leduc, and J. Zmuidzinas, A wideband, low-noise superconducting amplifier with high dynamic range, Nat. Phys. 8, 623 (2012).
  7. M. Malnou, M. R. Vissers, J. D. Wheeler, J. Aumentado, J. Hubmayr, J. N. Ullom, and J. Gao, A three-wave mixing kinetic inductance traveling-wave amplifier with near-quantum-limited noise performance, PRX Quantum 2, 010302 (2021).
  8. M. A. Castellanos-Beltran, K. D. Irwin, G. C. Hilton, L. R. Vale, and K. W. Lehnert, Amplification and squeezing of quantum noise with a tunable Josephson metamaterial, Nat. Phys. 4, 929 (2008).
  9. S. Frasca, C. Roy, G. Beaulieu, and P. Scarlino, Three-wave-mixing quantum-limited kinetic inductance parametric amplifier operating at 6 T near 1 K, Phys. Rev. Appl. 21, 024011 (2024).
  10. M. R. Vissers, R. P. Erickson, H.-S. Ku, L. Vale, X. Wu, G. C. Hilton, and D. P. Pappas, Low-noise kinetic inductance traveling-wave amplifier using three-wave mixing, Appl. Phys. Lett. 108, 012601 (2016).
  11. S. Shu, N. Klimovich, B. H. Eom, A. D. Beyer, R. B. Thakur, H. G. Leduc, and P. K. Day, Nonlinearity and wide-band parametric amplification in a (Nb,Ti)N microstrip transmission line, Phys. Rev. Res. 3, 023184 (2021).
  12. L. Planat, A. Ranadive, R. Dassonneville, J. Puertas Martínez, S. Léger, C. Naud, O. Buisson, W. Hasch-Guichard, D. M. Basko, and N. Roch, Photonic-crystal Josephson traveling-wave parametric amplifier, Phys. Rev. X 10, 021021 (2020).
  13. C. Macklin, K. O’Brien, D. Hover, M. E. Schwartz, V. Bolkhovsky, X. Zhang, W. D. Oliver, and I. Siddiqi, A near-quantum-limited Josephson traveling-wave parametric amplifier, Science 350, 307 (2015).
  14. T. Roy, S. Kundu, M. Chand, A. M. Vadiraj, A. Ranadive, N. Nehra, M. P. Patankar, J. Aumentado, A. A. Clerk, and R. Vijay, Broadband parametric amplification with impedance engineering: Beyond the gain-bandwidth product, Appl. Phys. Lett. 107, 262601 (2015).
  15. A. Anferov, A. Suleymanzade, A. Oriani, J. Simon, and D. I. Schuster, Millimeter-wave four-wave mixing via kinetic inductance for quantum devices, Phys. Rev. Appl. 13, 024056 (2020).
  16. D. C. Mattis and J. Bardeen, Theory of the anomalous skin effect in normal and superconducting metals, Phys. Rev. 111, 412 (1958).
  17. T. Sweetnam, Development of Superconducting Parametric Amplifiers for Astrophysics Applications, Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, Department of Physics & Astronomy, 2024.
  18. Z. Hao, J. Cochran, Y.-C. Chang, H. M. Cole, and S. Shankar, Wireless Josephson parametric amplifier above 20 GHz, Appl. Phys. Lett. 128, eid 014004 (2026).
  19. C. Tan, Y. Wang, Z. Yan, X. Nie, Y. He, and W. Chen, Superconducting filter based on split-ring resonator structures, IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 29, 1 (2019).
  20. M. C. Ricci and S. M. Anlage, Single superconducting split-ring resonator electrodynamics, Appl. Phys. Lett. 88, 264102 (2006).
  21. I. McGregor and K. M. Hock, Complementary split-ring resonator-based deflecting structure, Phys. Rev. Spec. Top. Accel. Beams 16, 090101 (2013).
  22. M. D. Soldatenkova, A. D. Triznova, E. M. Baeva, P. I. Zolotov, A. I. Lomakin, A. I. Kardakova, and G. N. Goltsman, Normal-state transport in superconducting NbN films on r-cut sapphire, J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 2086, 012212 (2021).
  23. X. Yang, L. You, L. Zhang, C. Lv, H. Li, X. Liu, H. Zhou, and Z. Wang, Comparison of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors made of NbTiN and NbN thin films, IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 28, 2776288 (2018).
  24. G. dall’Oglio, L. Pizzo, L. Piccirillo, and L. Martinis, New 3He/4He refrigerator, Cryogenics 31, 61 (1991).
  25. E. A. Tholén, A. Ergül, D. Schaeffer, and D. B. Haviland, Gain, noise and intermodulation in a nonlinear superconducting resonator, EPJ Quantum Technol. 1, 5 (2014).
  26. S. J. Melhuish, M. A. McCulloch, L. Piccirillo, and C. Stott, A high-performance wave guide cryogenic thermal break, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 87, 104706 (2016).
  27. M. A. McCulloch, J. Grahn, S. J. Melhuish, P.-A. Nilsson, L. Piccirillo, J. Schleeh, and N. Wadefalk, Dependence of noise temperature on physical temperature for cryogenic low-noise amplifiers, J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst. 3, 014003 (2017).
  28. R. Kaufman, C. Liu, K. Cicak, B. Mesits, M. Xia, C. Zhou, M. Nowicki, J. Aumentado, D. Pekker, and M. Hatridge, Simple high-saturation-power quantum-limited rf-SQUID-array-based Josephson parametric amplifiers, Phys. Rev. Appl. 24, eid 014052 (2025).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Applied 25, 054047– Published 19 May, 2026
  • Received 16 January 2026
  • Revised 10 April 2026
  • Accepted 28 April 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation