Fabrication of compact circular ring antenna loaded with Gd-YIG ferrites: Photon–magnon interaction

Abstract

In telecommunications technology, transmitting and receiving signals is not possible without an integrated antenna. Recently, novel approaches of transmitting and receiving signals using advancement in quantum technology as “information coherent transfer” have been emphasized which overcomes the limitations of superconducting qubits. In the present investigation, a compact-sized circular-ring antenna was designed for a 12 GHz centre frequency. The antenna was topped with Gd(x)-doped YIG (x = 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3) thin disks to investigate its tunable operation over the tri-band (C to Ku) frequencies due to the photon–magnon coupling, which enables coherent qubit information transmission from an electromagnetic (EM) carrier to the magnons. The proposed prototype of the antenna is validated using HFSS simulation. To characterize the frequency tunability of the designed antenna, we measured the return loss (S11) via a vector network analyzer as a function of dc magnetic field. Different concentrations of Gd-doped YIG ferrites (Gdx-YIG) have been loaded on ring antennas to observe strong anti-crossing phenomena with the application of an external magnetic field. The designed antenna has a tunability of around 300% for a small applied magnetic field up to 3.7 kOe. The maximum gain of dual resonance antenna is 1.4 for higher magnetic field of 3.7 kOe. The highest efficiency and lowest bandwidth of 30% and 14% respectively, for Gd0.1-YIG disk are observed. The measured normal mode splitting spectrum as a function of bias magnetic field that gives the maximum coupling strength is 153 MHz for a Gd concentration of 0.1. For practical applications, such antennas are suitable for use in tunable tri-band or multi-band applications (C to Ku).