Fast tuning of superconducting microwave cavities

Paper in proceedings, 2008

Photons are fundamental excitations of electromagnetic fields and can be captured in cavities. For a given cavity with a certain size, the fundamental mode has a fixed frequency f which gives the photons a specific "color". The cavity also has a typical lifetime tau, which results in a finite linewidth delta f. If the size of the cavity is changed fast compared to tau, and so that the frequency change Delta f >> delta f, then it is possible to change the "color" of the captured photons. Here we demonstrate superconducting microwave cavities, with tunable effective lengths. The tuning is obtained by varying a Josephson inductance at one end of the cavity. We show data on four different samples and demonstrate tuning by several hundred linewidths in a time Delta t << tau. Working in the few photon limit, we show that photons stored in the cavity at one frequency will leak out from the cavity with the new frequency after the detuning. The characteristics of the measured devices make them suitable for different applications such as dynamic coupling of qubits and parametric amplification.