An analysis method for transmission measurements of superconducting resonators with applications to quantum-regime dielectric-loss measurements

Superconducting resonators provide a convenient way to measure loss tangents of various dielectrics at low temperature. For the purpose of examining the microscopic loss mechanisms in dielectrics, precise measurements of the internal quality factor at different values of energy stored in the resonators are required. Here, we present a consistent method to analyze a LC superconducting resonator coupled to a transmission line. We first derive an approximate expression for the transmission S-parameter S-21(omega), with x the excitation frequency, based on a complete circuit model. In the weak coupling limit, we show that the internal quality factor is reliably determined by fitting the approximate form of S-21(omega). Since the voltage V of the capacitor of the LC circuit is required to determine the energy stored in the resonator, we next calculate the relation between V and the forward propagating wave voltage V-in(+), with the latter being the parameter controlled in experiments. Due to the dependence of the quality factor on voltage, V is not simply proportional to V-in(+). We find a self-consistent way to determine the relation between V and V-in(+), which employs only the fitting parameters for S-21(omega) and a linear scaling factor. We then examine the resonator transmission in the cases of port reflection and impedance mismatch. We find that resonator transmission asymmetry is primarily due to the reflection from discontinuity in transmission lines. We show that our analysis method to extract the internal quality factor is robust in the non-ideal cases above. Finally, we show that the analysis method used for the LC resonator can be generalized to arbitrary weakly coupled lumped and distributed resonators. The generalization uses a systematic approximation on the response function based on the pole and zero which are closest to the resonance frequency. This Closest Pole and Zero Method is a valuable tool for analyzing physical measurements of high-Q resonators. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.