Dieter Koelle

Josephson microwave circuits are essential for the currently flourishing research on superconducting technologies, such as quantum computation, quantum sensing, and microwave signal processing. To increase the possible parameter space for device operation with respect to the current standards, many materials for superconducting circuits are under active investigation. Here, we present the realization of a frequency-tunable, weakly nonlinear Josephson microwave circuit made of the high-temperature cuprate superconductor YBa2Cu3O7 (YBCO), a material with a high critical temperature and a very high critical magnetic field. An in situ frequency-tunability of ∼300 MHz is achieved by integrating a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) into the circuit based on Josephson junctions directly written with a helium ion microscope (HIM). Our results demonstrate that YBCO-HIM-SQUID microwave resonators are promising candidates for quantum sensing and microwave technology applications.

We introduce an equivalent-circuit element based on the theory of interface pinning in random systems to analyze the contribution of domain wall motion below the coercive field to the impedance of a ferroelectric, as a function of amplitude E0 and frequency f of an applied ac electric field. We demonstrate our model on a bulk PbZrxTi1−xO3 (PZT) reference sample and then investigate capacitor stacks, containing ferroelectric 0.5(Ba0.7Ca0.3)TiO3–0.5Ba(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O3 (BCZT) thin films, epitaxially grown by pulsed laser deposition on Nb-doped SrTiO3 single crystal substrates and covered with Au electrodes. Impedance spectra from f=10 Hz to 1 MHz were collected at different E0. Deconvolution of the spectra is achieved by fitting the measured impedance with an equivalent-circuit model of the capacitor stacks, and we extract for E0=2.5 kV/cm, a frequency-dependent permittivity of εr′(f)=458+7.3ln⁡(1Hz/2πf) for the BCZT films from the obtained fit parameters. From an extended Rayleigh analysis, we obtain a coupling strength of 0.187 cm/kV between dielectric nonlinearity and dielectric dispersion in the BCZT films and identify different domain-wall-motion regimes. Finally, we construct a schematic diagram of the different domain-wall-motion regimes and discuss the corresponding domain-wall dynamics. Our approach can be utilized to replace purely phenomenological constant phase elements (CPEs) in modeling the impedance response of ferroelectrics and extracting material properties.