Low noise microwave parametric amplifier

We report the lowest noise temperature of any microwave amplifier except the maser. This amplifier is a nearly degenerate superconducting parametric amplifier at X-band consisting of a low β, thin film, single junction SQUID, a monolithic 50 Ω to 1 Ω impedance matching network, and a cooled circulator. Nb/Nb
2
O
5
/Pb alloy junctions were incorporated into Nb and Pb-in circuitry on 1×2 cm silicon chips. The SQUID was phase-biased near 90° and driven by an external pump at approximately twice the operating frequency. The self-resonance frequency of the SQUID inductance and junction capacitance was set at the operating frequency of 8.2GHz. The operating charac teristics depended on the pump amplitude, the junction phase bias, and the SQUID parameters. For small values of
\beta < 1
, the maximum gain in both the signal and idler channels was ≈10dB, the bandwidth = 170MHz, and the single-sidehand noise temperature was 6K with an uncertainty of (+15 to -7)K. For higher β, the gain increased to nearly 30dB with increased noise and parametric oscillations occurring near the pump subharmonic frequency.