Development and characteristics of a superconducting resonator and cryogenic low-noise amplifiers for Shanghai Penning Trap

Abstract: Accurate atomic mass data hold significant application value in various research fields, in which Penning Trap mass spectrometry is considered the most precise experimental method. A cryogenic detection system is a key component for reading out the image charge of charged particles in Penning traps using the Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance technique. In this paper, we present the development and characteristics of this detection system, which includes a superconducting resonator and cryogenic low-noise amplifiers. The resonator consists of delicately woven thin NbTi wires configured into a multilayer helical coils, offering a quality factor of 98004 at around 1 MHz. Low-noise amplifiers are developed based on GaAs field-effect transistors, exhibiting amplification factors greater than 27 dB with a power consumption of approximately 6 mW in the frequency range of 0.1 to 10 MHz. The lowest input voltage noise is 0.8 nV/ √ Hz at 1 MHz. The fabrication process, operation, and measurements are elucidated in detail.