NARROW-BAND ULTRA-LOW CURRENT MEASUREMENTS WITH A RF SQUID

Abstract
The use of a ferromagnetic transformer coupled to a SQUID, as previously described, per­ mits to measure very low currents. A low loss ceramic core for the transformer has yielded to further increase in the sensitivity of about two orders of magnitude in a narrow-band around a fixed frequen­ cy. At present the achieved sensitivity of about 8 x 10-1* pA in 1 Hz bandwidth at 150 Hz. The use of a superconducting magnetometer as a high sensitivity current detector has been propo­ sed by some authors a few years ago /1,2,3/. More recently, by coupling a transformer with a ferroma­ gnetic core to a rf SQUID /4/, we have enhanced the overall current*sensitivity up to very interesting figures /5/. Due to the particular ferromagnetic material employed /6/ the useful bandwidth of the device was constrained between dc and a corner fre­ quency dictated by the strong frequency dependence of the relative permeability of the used core. In order to enhance the current sensitivity at a fixed frequency we inserted a tuning capacitor in the input circuit. However, due to the high value of the electrical conductivity of the core a large amount of eddy-current losses was present, limiting the Q of the urned circuit to not interesting va­ lues. This drawback has been overcome by means of a suitable choice of a ceramic core for. the trans­ former. We have tested a few commercially available ferrites in order to select those which preserve an acceptable value of the relative permeability at li­ quid helium temperature. The chosen material has been used to make up a superconducting transformer coupled to the SUID as shown in figure 1. The cur­ rent I (v) is supplied by a current generator I to the input circuit which consists of a capacitance C paralleled to the primary L (N turns) of the transformer. The secondary winding L (N turns) is connected with the inductance L to obtain as usual a flux transformer. All winding are made of super­ conducting wire. M™ = K_p/L L is the mutual in­ ductance between L and L , while M = K/L L is the mutual inductance between L and the inductance of the SQUID, L.