Amplification by injection locking of a Josephson oscillator

Abstract

Josephson oscillations near 9 GHz, produced by a point-contact junction mounted in a coaxial resonator and biased onto the cavity-induced step in its V-I curve, have been pulled in frequency and phase locked by a weak injected signal at a nearby frequency. The resulting output was at the signal frequency and had the narrow bandwidth and frequency stability of the input but the power level of the Josephson oscillations. Maximum gain of 51 dB was achieved for an input of 10−16 W.