Josephson Traveling Wave Parametric Amplifiers with Plasma oscillation phase-matching

Abstract: High gain and large bandwidth of traveling-wave parametric amplifier exploiting the nonlinearity of Josephson Junctions can be achieved by fulfilling the so-called phase-matching condition. This condition is usually addressed by placing resonant structures along the waveguide or by periodic modulations of its parameters, creating gaps in the waveguide's dispersion. Here, we propose to employ the Josephson junctions, which constitute the centerline of the amplifier, as resonant elements for phase matching. By numerical simulations in JoSIM (and WRspice) software, we show that Josephson plasma oscillations can be utilized to create wavevector mismatch sufficient for phase matching as well as to prevent the conversion of the pump energy to higher harmonics. The proposed TWPA design has a gain of 15 dB and a 3.5 GHz bandwidth, which is comparable to the state-of-the-art TWPAs.