Movable thin-film superconducting resonator coupled to a tapered optical microfiber at 15 mK

Abstract

We have coupled a tapered optical microfiber to a translatable thin-film lumped-element superconducting Al microwave resonator that is cooled to 15 mK. The thin-film resonator has a resonance frequency of 6.14 GHz, a quality factor of Q= 2.59 × 105, and is mounted inside a 3-D Al microwave cavity that provides a well-isolated electromagnetic environment. The microfiber is held fixed while the cavity is mounted on an x-z translation stage that allows the lumped-element resonator and the optical fiber to be brought close to each other (less than 1 mm). When 780-nm light is sent through the fiber, Rayleigh scattering in the fiber causes a weak position-dependent nonuniform illumination of the thin-film resonator, exciting quasiparticles in the superconducting film and thereby affecting its resonance frequency fo and Q. We report on the response of the resonator to both the scattered optical power and the presence of the fiber's dielectric, as the thin-film resonator is moved in situ with respect to the fiber.