Mechanically Modulated Microwave Circulator using Cryogenic-MEMS Switches
Abstract
Microwave signal generation, control and processing are critical to the design and realization of quantum information processors. In fact, many of the same frequency spectrum planning and multiplexing techniques, not to mention filters, mixers, amplifiers in RF Communication technologies and RF MEMS have analogues in the 10 milli-Kelvin operation regime of quantum computing. Inductors and transmission lines that are prohibitively lossy at Room Temperature become exceedingly high performance as metals become superconducting. However, like modern 5G cell phones one bottleneck remains – a critical need for enforcing oneway microwave signal propagation. Currently, this task is performed by a bank of commercial ferrite junction circulators from Quinstar that are 1inch3 in volume. The Google Sycamore processor got world-wide attention for its groundbreaking result of quantum supremacy. But if we study the RF routing and circuit diagram in the Supplementary section of the paper1, we find 45 Quinstar circulators (Figure 1) on the 10mK plate of the dilution refrigerator. The circulators occupy >50% of the total cooling volume and the size of the circulator bank will become a prohibitive bottleneck as quantum computers scale to 100-1000 Qubits.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 21, 2022
- Source ID
- FA23862114088XX0
Entities
People
- Sunil Bhave
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Purdue University
- United States Air Force