Search

We demonstrate Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizers (JAWS) with increased operating temperature range for temperatures below 4 K. These JAWS synthesizers were fabricated with externally-shunted Nb/ a -Si/Nb junctions whose critical current exhibits improved temperature stability compared to the self-shunted Nb/Nb 0.15 Si 0.85 /Nb junctions typically used. Vertical stud resistors made of 230 nm of PdAu were developed to provide the milliohm shunt resistance required for junction overdamping while maintaining a small footprint suitable for high-density series arrays embedded in a coplanar waveguide. We evaluated the performance of these resistors from 3.8 K down to 20 mK. We designed, fabricated and tested a JAWS circuit with 4650 externally shunted Nb/ a -Si/Nb JJs with a critical current density ( J c ) of 0.12 mA ∕ μ m 2 and critical current ( I c ) of 3 mA. This circuit was designed to be mounted to the 3 K stage of a dilution refrigerator and used to control and calibrate a qubit mounted at the 10 mK stage. To increase the circuit density of the JAWS circuits we made arrays of two-junction vertical stacks. Current-voltage ( I - V ) curves of this JAWS circuit with stacked junctions under microwave excitation show Shapiro steps with quantum-locking ranges similar to those of JAWS circuits used for qubit control.

Scaling of quantum computers to fault-tolerant levels relies critically on the integration of energy-efficient, stable, and reproducible qubit control and readout electronics. In comparison to traditional semiconductor-control electronics (TSCE) located at room temperature, the signals generated by rf sources based on Josephson-junctions (JJs) benefit from small device sizes, low power dissipation, intrinsic calibration, superior reproducibility, and insensitivity to ambient fluctuations. Previous experiments to colocate qubits and JJ-based control electronics have resulted in quasiparticle poisoning of the qubit, degrading the coherence and lifetime of the qubit. In this paper, we digitally control a 0.01-K transmon qubit with pulses from a Josephson pulse generator (JPG) located at the 3-K stage of a dilution refrigerator. We directly compare the qubit lifetime T 1 , the coherence time T 2 * , and the thermal occupation P th when the qubit is controlled by the JPG circuit versus the TSCE setup. We find agreement to within the daily fluctuations of ±0.5 μ s and ±2 μ s for T 1 and T 2 * , respectively, and agreement to within the 1% error for P th . Additionally, we perform randomized benchmarking to measure an average JPG gate error of 2.1 × 10 -2 . In combination with a small device size ( < 25 mm 2 ) and low on-chip power dissipation (≪100 μ W), these results are an important step toward demonstrating the viability of using JJ-based control electronics located at temperature stages higher than the mixing-chamber stage in highly scaled superconducting quantum information systems.

On March 24 and 25, 2017 researchers and clinicians from around the world met at Temple University in Philadelphia to discuss the current knowledge of Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis (MAP) and its relationship to human disease. The conference was held because of shared concern that MAP is a zoonotic bacterium that poses a threat not only to animal health but also human health. In order to further study this problem, the conferees discussed ways to improve MAP diagnostic tests and discussed potential future anti-MAP clinical trials. The conference proceedings may be viewed on the www.Humanpara.org website. A summary of the salient work in this field is followed by recommendations from a majority of the conferees.

The rabbit homolog to the locus control region (LCR) of the human beta-like globin gene cluster was isolated, and long segments containing the DNase I hypersensitive sites (HS) were sequenced. The order and spacing of HS4, HS3, HS2 and HS1 are conserved between rabbit and human. Alignment of these sequences with their homologs from human, goat, and mouse shows that very long segments of DNA match between species, for over a thousand base pairs on either side of the previously identified functional cores, indicating that some important functions are found outside the cores. The activity of rabbit HS2 and HS3 was tested by attaching each to a novel reporter gene constructed by inserting the luciferase coding region into the rabbit epsilon-globin gene. In contrast to previous reports showing no effect of human or mouse HS3 on transient expression, both the rabbit HS2 and HS3 DNA fragments separately increased transient expression from the epsilon-luciferase hybrid gene and expression from stably integrated constructs in K562 erythroleukemia cells.