Transparency-engineered SQUID cells for Kerr-free three-wave-mixing Josephson metamaterials
Abstract
We introduce a transparency-engineered rf-SQUID cell for Kerr-free three-wave-mixing Josephson metamaterials. This design replaces the conventional tunnel-junction element with an effective Josephson element formed by two junctions in series, yielding a non-sinusoidal energy-phase relation that can be used as a tunable nonlinear design resource. We show that the asymmetry between the two series junctions and the applied flux bias provide independent control over the local expansion of the rf-SQUID potential, enabling operating points where the leading quartic Kerr term is suppressed while the cubic nonlinearity remains finite. We derive the corresponding Kerr-free condition, identify the resulting operating ridge in parameter space, and analyze the local stability and passive-matching constraints that bound its physically accessible portion. Our results provide a compact unit-cell design principle for three-wave-mixing Josephson metamaterials and suggest a route toward Kerr-suppressed Josephson traveling-wave parametric amplifiers.
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BibTeX
@misc{guarcello2026transparencyengineered,
title = {{Transparency-engineered SQUID cells for Kerr-free three-wave-mixing Josephson metamaterials}},
author = {Claudio Guarcello and A. Mert Bozkurt and Carlo Barone and Giovanni Filatrella and Alessandro Bruno and Sergio Pagano},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.05177},
eprint = {2609.05177},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.05177},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Transparency-engineered SQUID cells for Kerr-free three-wave-mixing Josephson metamaterials
AU - Claudio Guarcello
AU - A. Mert Bozkurt
AU - Carlo Barone
AU - Giovanni Filatrella
AU - Alessandro Bruno
AU - Sergio Pagano
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.05177
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.05177
AB - We introduce a transparency-engineered rf-SQUID cell for Kerr-free three-wave-mixing Josephson metamaterials. This design replaces the conventional tunnel-junction element with an effective Josephson element formed by two junctions in series, yielding a non-sinusoidal energy-phase relation that can be used as a tunable nonlinear design resource. We show that the asymmetry between the two series junctions and the applied flux bias provide independent control over the local expansion of the rf-SQUID potential, enabling operating points where the leading quartic Kerr term is suppressed while the cubic nonlinearity remains finite. We derive the corresponding Kerr-free condition, identify the resulting operating ridge in parameter space, and analyze the local stability and passive-matching constraints that bound its physically accessible portion. Our results provide a compact unit-cell design principle for three-wave-mixing Josephson metamaterials and suggest a route toward Kerr-suppressed Josephson traveling-wave parametric amplifiers.
ER -