Proton radiation effects in microwave cavities and ring resonators fabricated from YBa2Cu3O7−δ

Abstract

We report the first radiation effects study on a superconducting ring resonator made from thin-film YBa2Cu3O7−δ. Exposure to 2 MeV protons causes the superconducting transition temperature Tc to decrease predictably with fluence. For temperatures below about 0.9Tc , there is no significant change in the transmission coefficient, the center frequency, or the quality factor Q of the resonator, even for doses in excess of 4×1016 protons/cm2 (∼0.04 displacements per film atom). Similarly, the low-temperature surface resistance Rs of an unpatterned film does not change with irradiation. We show that this insensitivity to radiation is not predicted by standard theory, and that the dominant part of Rs at low temperature is the residual resistance R0. Thus any viable theory describing the origin of R0 must, as a criterion, explain the origin of its insensitivity to large irradiation doses. This criterion is used to evaluate theories ascribing R0 to weak links, flux pinning, impurities, and lattice imperfections.