A high-performance cryogenic amplifier based on a radio-frequency single electron transistor

Abstract

We demonstrate a high-performance cryogenic amplifier based on a radio-frequency single-electron- transistor (rf-SET). The high charge sensitivity and large bandwidth of the rf-SET, along with low power dissipation, low capacitance and on-chip integrability, make it a good candidate for a general-purpose cryogenic amplifier for high impedance sources. We measure a large-gate rf-SET with an open-loop voltage noise of 30 nV/(Hz), among the lowest reported voltage noise figures for a SET. Using a closed-loop transimpedance configuration, the amplifier shows almost 2 orders of magnitude increase in dynamic range, a 3 dB bandwidth of 30 kHz, and a transimpedance gain of 50 V/μA for a cryogenic 1 MΩ load resistor. The performance of this amplifier is already sufficient for use as an integrated readout with some types of high-performance cryogenic detectors for astrophysics.