A System for Cancellation of Two-Level System Noise in Kinetic Inductance Devices

Citation

Meiburg, Alexander (2018) A System for Cancellation of Two-Level System Noise in Kinetic Inductance Devices. Senior thesis (Major), California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/372p-e428. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:01282022-221737571

Abstract

Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs) are showing promise in a variety of low-light applications photometry applications, notably in observing B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background. These devices are read out by modulating the inductance of an LC resonator through light, and observing the shift in resonant frequency. Among several contributing sources of noise is Two-Level System noise (TLS noise) that causes low-loss drift in the frequency. Under certain assumptions of the source of the noise, we propose a new dual-resonator design that would allow the TLS noise to be observed independently of the signal, and thus cancelled out. This design comes at a roughly factor-of-2 cost in component size and sensitivity. We designed a manufactured a niobium-on-silicon chip, but encountered issues in that we were unable to observe enough TLS noise to conclusively say that the cancellation works.

Thesis Files