Thin-film superconducting resonator tunable to the ground-state hyperfine splitting of 87Rb

Abstract

We describe a thin-film superconducting Nb microwave resonator, tunable to within 0.3 ppm of the hyperfine splitting of 87Rb at fRb = 6.834683 GHz. We coarsely tuned the resonator using electron-beam lithography, decreasing the resonance frequency from 6.8637 GHz to 6.8278 GHz. For in situ fine tuning at 15 mK, the resonator inductance was varied using a piezoelectric stage to move a superconducting pin above the resonator. We found a maximum frequency shift of about 8.7 kHz per 60-nm piezoelectric step and a tuning range of 18 MHz. © 2011 Copyright 2011 Author(s). This article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.