A ballistic graphene superconducting microwave circuit

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 4069 - 7
• Main Authors: Schmidt, Felix E., Jenkins, Mark D., Watanabe, Kenji, Taniguchi, Takashi, Steele, Gary A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 04-10-2018; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/766/119/1003; 639/925/918/1052; 639/925/927/1064; Balances (scales); Circuits; Graphene; Holes; Humanities and Social Sciences; Inductance; Josephson junctions; Microwave circuits; multidisciplinary; Parametric amplifiers; Qubits (quantum computing); Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Superconductivity
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06595-2

Josephson junctions (JJ) are a fundamental component of microwave quantum circuits, such as tunable cavities, qubits, and parametric amplifiers. Recently developed encapsulated graphene JJs, with supercurrents extending over micron distance scales, have exciting potential applications as a new building block for quantum circuits. Despite this, the microwave performance of this technology has not been explored. Here, we demonstrate a microwave circuit based on a ballistic graphene JJ embedded in a superconducting cavity. We directly observe a gate-tunable Josephson inductance through the resonance frequency of the device and, using a detailed RF model, we extract this inductance quantitatively. We also observe the microwave losses of the device, and translate this into sub-gap resistances of the junction at μeV energy scales, not accessible in DC measurements. The microwave performance we observe here suggests that graphene Josephson junctions are a feasible platform for implementing coherent quantum circuits.
Encapsulated graphene Josephson junctions are promising for microwave quantum circuits but so far haven’t been explored. Here, Schmidt and Jenkins et al. observe a gate-tunable Josephson inductance in a microwave circuit based on a ballistic graphene Josephson junction embedded in a superconducting cavity.