Superconducting microstrip amplifiers with sub-Kelvin noise temperature near 4 GHz

Abstract

We present measurements of an amplifier operating at 3.8 GHz with 150 MHz of bandwidth based on the microstrip input-coil resonance of a dc superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) with submicron Josephson junctions. The noise temperature is measured using two methods: comparing the signal-to-noise ratio of the system with and without the SQUID in the amplifier chain, and using a modified Y-factor technique where calibrated narrowband noise is mixed up to the SQUID amplifier operating frequency. With the SQUID cooled to 0.35 K, we observe a minimum system noise temperature of 0.55 ± 0.13 K, dominated by the contribution from the SQUID amplifier.