A compact design for the Josephson mixer: The lumped element circuit

We present a compact and efficient design in terms of gain, bandwidth, and dynamical range for the Josephson mixer, the superconducting circuit performing three-wave mixing at microwave frequencies. In an all lumped-element based circuit with galvanically coupled ports, we demonstrate nondegenerate amplification for microwave signals over a bandwidth up to 50 MHz for a power gain of 20 dB. The quantum efficiency of the mixer is shown to be about 70%, and its saturation power reaches -112 dBm. (C) 2015 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.