High Temperature Superconductor Pulse Amplifiers for High-Speed Low-Noise Applications

41183 Conductus, Inc. The high-speed sensitivity of fast particle detectors is limited by the bandwidth and noise of the following pulse amplifier. Wide-band semiconducting amplifiers can consume 100's of milliwatts of power to enable high-speed operation, which makes them unsuitable for cooling, and prevents high-density integration for multi channel systems. This project will use superconductive pulse amplifiers, which are capable of low-noise, ultra low-power dissipation and high bandwidth up to 10 GHz, and thus offer performance unattainable by the best semiconducting amplifiers. During Phase I, the performance of the superconducting pulse amplifiers will be demonstrated at temperatures ranging from 4 K to 50 K. Amplifier designs enabling different gain and bandwidth capabilities will be investigated, and accurate measurements of noise and bandwidth will be made. In Phase Il a prototype multiple channel amplifier system will be fabricated and packaged, according to customer requirements. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: These pulse amplifiers should benefit any application that requires high-speed acquisition of fast low-amplitude pulses, such as high-rate particle detectors for high energy physics and photo-detectors in high-speed fiber optic data communication links. They could also be used as voltage drivers for single flux quantum circuits which are capable of digital operation at 100's of GHz. Low power dissipation and high temperature superconductor implementation should also make them very suitable for commercial and military satellite based sensing and detection applications.