Alternating current-driven microwave loss modulation in a fluxonic metamaterial
Oleksandr V. Dobrovolskiy, Michael Huth, Valerij A. Shklovskij
2015
Applied Physics Letters
We introduce a fluxonic metamaterial on the basis of nanopatterned superconducting Nb microstrips and employ it for modulation and synthesis of quantized loss levels in the lower GHz range by a sine-wave quasistatic ac drive. The nanopatterns are uniaxial nanogrooves with identical and different slope steepness, which induce a pinning potential of the washboard type for Abrikosov vortices. For the fundamental matching field, when the location of vortex rows geometrically matches the
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... the following effects are observed: The forward transmission coefficient S_21(f) of the microstrips can be controllably modulated within a range of about 3 dB by the ac current. For the sample with symmetric grooves, depending on the choice of the operation point in the current-voltage curve, the shape and the duty cycle of the output signal can be tuned. For the sample with asymmetric grooves, depending on the ac amplitude, a sine-to-triangular or a sine-to-rectangular pulse shape conversion is observed. The possibility of synthesizing quantized loss levels by a serial connection of the two samples with different nanopatterns is exemplified and can be used for the development of multilevel excess-loss-based fluxonic devices.
doi:10.1063/1.4934487
fatcat:2kluppl3xrbwzc5uptayiptslq