Approaching optimal microwave-acoustic transduction on lithium niobate using SQUID arrays

Abstract

Electronic devices exploiting acoustic vibrations are ubiquitous in classical and quantum technologies. Central to these devices is the transducer, which enables the exchange of signals between electrical and acoustic networks. Among the various transduction mechanisms, piezoelectricity remains the most widely used. However, conventional piezoelectric transducers are limited to either small efficiencies or narrow bandwidths and they typically operate at fixed frequency. These limitations restrict their utility in many applications. Here we propose and demonstrate a robust strategy to realize piezoelectric microwave-acoustic transduction close to the maximal efficiency-bandwidth product of lithium niobate. We use SQUID arrays to transform the large complex impedance of wide-band interdigital transducers into 50 $\Omega$ and demonstrate unprecedented efficiency$\times$bandwidth $\approx$ 440 MHz, with a maximum efficiency of 62% at 5.7 GHz. Moreover, leveraging the flux dependence of SQUIDs, we realize transducers with in-situ tunability across nearly an octave around 5.5 GHz. Our transducer can be readily connected to other superconducting quantum devices, with applications in microwave-to-optics conversion schemes, quantum-limited phonon detection, or acoustic spectroscopy in the 4-8 GHz band.