A phase sensitive SIS mixer to circumvent the quantum limit

Author

Bocko, Mark F. ; Zhang, Zhao Nan ; Martinet, Stephen ; Cromar, Michael W.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Rochester Univ., NY, USA

Volume

27

Issue

2

fYear

1991

fDate

3/1/1991 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

3391

Lastpage

3394

Abstract

A conventional superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer, that is pumped by a single-frequency local oscillator (LO) functions as a phase-insensitive linear amplifier and may achieve a noise level near the quantum limit of one-half photon added noise per unit bandwidth. A phase-sensitive linear amplifier may have less noise than this quantum limit. To overcome the quantum noise limit with an SIS mixer, a two-LO technique which makes the mixer´s gain dependent upon the phase of the incoming signal was used. The phase sensitive gain of this two-LO mixer is experimentally demonstrated. The gain variation from maximum to minimum is more than 20 dB. Theoretical predictions of the noise of the two-LO mixer are presented

Keywords

microwave oscillators; mixers (circuits); solid-state microwave circuits; superconducting junction devices; gain variation; incoming signal; noise level; phase sensitive SIS mixer; phase sensitive gain; quantum limit; single-frequency local oscillator; Bandwidth; Frequency; Local oscillators; Mixers; NIST; Noise cancellation; Noise generators; Noise level; Phase noise; Temperature measurement;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/20.133940

Filename

133940