A compact high temperature superconducting bandpass filter for integration with a Josephson mixer

Abstract

A compact eight-pole high temperature superconducting (HTS) filter is designed for the RF signal input of an HTS Josephson mixer. The filter has 18.2% fractional bandwidth centered at 11 GHz. A stepped-impedance hairpin resonator is employed to minimize the filter size. The obtained filter size is 10 mm × 2.79 mm, which is very compact. The monolithic HTS Josephson frequency down-converter that incorporated this new filter demonstrated the highest conversion efficiency to date for an HTS Josephson mixer. Both the filter and the on-chip HTS circuit module were fabricated on a 0.5 mm thick MgO wafer with a single-sided YBCO film. The design, simulation, and experimental characterization of the HTS filter are presented in this paper. The early measurement results of the integrated HTS down-converter incorporated this filter are also described.