Skip to main content

TruePA at the APS March Meeting 2024

From Monday, March 3rd 2024, thousands of physicists will descend on Minneapolis for the annual meeting of the American Physical Society. For the superconducting quantum circuits community it is arguably the biggest meeting of the community. The latest of research on superconducting qubits, resonators and of course also parametric amplifiers will be discussed among experts from around the world.

Naturally, TruePA will also present the latest results and advances and will contribute a total of seven talks. Check out the following sessions to see the results:

Tuesday, 5th March, G61 - Quantum Amplifiers I: Novel Designs and Materials

Friday, 8th March, Z46 - Broadband Parametric Amplifiers and Circulators

 

The Wonders of Traveling Wave Parametric Amplifiers

Inspired by the popular book series "... for Dummies" researchers from TruePA had a crack at writing a text to convey the main features of TWPAs. Check it out here and leave us a comment in the forum if you have some feedback!

TruePA researchers enter the sound art scene

On November 5th weeks and months of preparations culminated in an evening of three performances. Each paired researchers from TruePA with a sound artist to go on a sonic exploration of the quantum world. A diverse crowd of about 100 people with various professional backgrounds enjoyed a three hour journey through different aspects of research on superconducting quantum circuits.

"To be perfectly honest, I was mainly very nervous about our performance. It's a very different experience from giving a scientific talk. But it seemed people really enjoyed the different performances and I think it was a great way to communicate what we work on to a much broader audience than usual," said Lukas Grünhaupt from TruePA partner PTB afterwards. Together with Asen Lyubenov Georgiev and Bhoomika R Bhat he teamed up with Dr. Thomas Tichai to take people on an audiovisual tour through their lab. Their performance followed the kick-off performance - a sonic lecture - by TruePA coordinator Prof. Anja Metelmann together with Dr. Steve Williams. Last but not least, Nicolas Gosling and Mathieu Féchant from Prof. Ioan M. Pop's team at KIT took real data showing the trajectory of a qubit jumping between its states and turned it into a video. This gave inspiration to sound artist Jeanette Petrik, who performed a mesmerizing piece conveying the randomness of the qubit trajectory. 

The event was made possible by financial support from the project, and enabled by sustain.fm and the Berline Science Week.

Quantum Inspired Sound: Sonic Explorations of the Quantum World

Join TruePA researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) for an evening of live performance in Berlin featuring quantum physics researchers and sound artists. Both are working with oscillators, amplifiers, resonators, and filters but in very different ways. And both explore the implications of uncertainty, randomness, and feedback networks. This unique event will feature three new compositions built from the sparks of connection between quantum concepts, data, and sound. All created and performed by collaborations between sound artists and quantum physicists.

The compositions are inspired by sounds of quantum labs and experiments, experimental data turned into sound, and quantum physics concepts. Hear the sounds of mechanical valves in cryostats looped and transformed into percussion; recordings of lab tours sliced to create soundscapes; quantum jump data transformed into pulse waves; feedback/feedforward concepts inspiring the inter-connection of independent synthesizer voices; and a sonic lecture with amplified chalkboard and live sounds inspired by harmonic oscillators, resonators, feedback, and self-oscillating filters. Don’t miss this chance to dive into the quantum world through sound.

Attending the event is free of charge and requires no registration. This event will take place as part of the Berlin Science Week Art & Science FORUM at Holzmarkt and will be held in the Säälchen. The location is wheelchair accessible.

Doors open 20.30, Performances from 21.00

Collaborations and performances by:

Steve Williams/drusnoise & Anja Metelmann
Jeannette Petrik, Ioan Pop, Mathieu Fechant & Nicolas Gosling
Thomas Tichai, Lukas Grünhaupt, Bhoomika R Bhat & Asen Georgiev

Video-introduction to TWPAs

We are excited to announce the release of an educational video that delves into the fundamentals of Traveling Wave Parametric Amplifiers (TWPAs). The 15-minute video presented by Sina Böhling, a PhD student in the group of Prof. Anja Metelmann at KIT, offers a comprehensive introduction to the world of TWPAs.

We invite you to watch the video here and embark on a journey to understand the remarkable capabilities of TWPAs. If you are left with open questions afterwards, feel free to head over to the message board and get in touch with experts from the consortium. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue our research.

TWPA market survey

The TruePA project (Truly Resilient Quantum Limited Traveling Wave Parametric Amplifiers) is a European research project funded by the Horizon Europe program and brings together researchers from 5 different countries. TruePA will develop the next generation of Traveling Wave Parametric Amplifiers (TWPAs), which are key tools for quantum technologies and basic sciences involving the detection of weak electromagnetic signals in the microwave domain.

As a consortium we want to gain a better understanding of the market needs regarding TWPAs, so that our research objectives can meet the actual requirements and needs of the community. We would kindly ask you to fill in our TWPA market survey. Completing the survey will take about 5 minutes and will help us to understand which expectations the component must need in the future.

The survey is open until 31.07.2023. After evaluation, we will publish the results of the survey here.

TruePA Days in Villard-de-Lans

Researchers from the TruePA project recently gathered in Villard-de-Lans in the french Préalpes for the productive TruePA Days. The three-day meeting featured presentations from all partners and a poster session. Between the official sessions the organizers had set aside time for informal discussions between the ~40 scientists attending the event. The event served as a valuable platform to further collaboration, knowledge exchange, and connections within the consortium.

During the TruePA Days the partners showcased their latest advancements towards truly resilient, quantum-limited, and non-reciprocal parametric amplifiers. Through engaging talks and a poster session, researchers shared their findings and explored innovative solutions to overcome challenges. On the final day of the event the attendees enjoyed a visit to the labs of Insitut Néel in nearby Grenoble, which was great fun for all participants and provided another chance to continue scientific exchange and brainstorming for new ideas in TruePA.

Search for galactic axions with a TWPA (arXiv:2304.07505)

Researchers from Institut Néel, a partner in TruePA, have provided a TWPA for the search of galactic axions to an italian research consortium prior to the start of TruePA. The axion is a hypothetical particle introduced to solve the stron CP problem in particle physics. The detector for these particles, a so-called haloscope has at its core a high-Q microwave cavity, which in this particular experiment is read out at frequencies around 10.353 GHz. Since the researchers are looking for very weak signals, a TWPA is a great addition to the setup to boost the overall SNR of the detector. The authors conclude: 'This result improves a factor about 4 the sensitivity we obtained in our previous run in almost the same frequency range, thanks to the new amplifier and an improved description of the background in the data analysis, based on a robust noise mode.' Read the full pre-print on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.07505

TruePA at the APS March Meeting

The annual March Meeting of the American Physical Society is among the biggest condensed matter conferences worldwide. Numerous sessions focus on various aspects of research on superconducting quantum circuits. This year three sessions were focused on parametric amplifiers alone, indicating the growing importance of the research direction. People from six of the eight partner institutions of TruePA made the trip to Las Vegas and contributed a total of 14 talks. In addition to the in-person meeting there will be a Virtual March Meeting from 20th to 22nd March, which provides  the opportunity to get research highlights from the comfort of your home.

As the TruePA consortium, we especially recommend the following sessions. You might even spot some familiar names – Enjoy!

M72 - Kinetic Inductance Parametric Amplifiers and Quantum-Limited Detectors
Y71 - Improving Qubit Readout with Parametric Amplifiers
Z71 - Lumped-Element Parametric Amplifiers and Circulators

TruePA Kickoff Meeting 9th and 10th February

Over two days the TruePA consortium met for its kickoff meeting at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. About 20 participants of the partner organizations from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden made the trip to Karlsruhe, while the hybrid format also allowed online attendance. Three months into the project the time was right for a first in-person check-in to discuss results and strategize about next steps. Organizational questions were addressed in the management board meeting, and the groundwork to make TruePA a success was discussed. The consortium’s advisory board was represented by its two experts from industry, Dr. J. Braumüller (Infineon AG) and Dr. D. de Jong (Qblox B.V.) who gave an overview over their respective activities. Throughout the project the advisory board will provide an outside perspective to guide the activities in TruePA.


Coordinator Prof Anja Metelmann from KIT commented after the meeting: “It was great to finally meet in person and get the project started. Even though it’s only the 3rd month of the project, we could already discuss scientific results and I am excited to see what we will be able to achieve over the next years.”

TruePA starts December 1st 2022

It is our pleasure to share that as of December 1st 2022 TruePA has started. Led by Prof. Anja Metelmann from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT, Germany) researchers from five research institutes and two companies work towards the next generation of traveling-wave parametric amplifiers. Our consortium combines expertise from the academic groups of Martina Esposito (CNR-SPIN, Italy), Nicolas Roch (CNRS - Institut Néel, France), Gerhard Kirchmair (IQOQI Innsbruck, Austria), Ioan M. Pop (KIT, Germany), and Lukas Grünhaupt (PTB, Germany). The academic perspective is complemented by insights from two SMEs represented by Luca Planat (Silent Waves, France), and Sumedh Mahashabde and David Niepce (Low Noise Factory, Sweden).