Interchannel Crosstalk and Nonlinearity of Microwave SQUID Multiplexers

In order to read out current signals from large-scale arrays of transition edge sensors (TES), microwave SQUID multiplexers (MW-MUX) have been developed by several groups. Reduction of crosstalk induced in the multiplexer is important in order to maintain the energy resolution or the noise equivalent power of detector arrays. In the present study, crosstalk between channels in MW-MUX with five different designs is experimentally evaluated. The resonance frequency separation is ten times as large as the resonator bandwidth. Without flux-ramp modulation, crosstalk between two adjacent channels neighboring in position decreases to ≈1 × 10
^-3
with increasing resonance frequency separation to ≈100 MHz. Crosstalk between SQUID channels neighboring in resonance frequency also decreases to 4 × 10
^-3
with increasing the distance to 2.5 mm. We show that nonlinear error can occur due to the crosstalk with flux-ramp modulation. Flux readings from a well-designed multiplexer exhibit crosstalk of less than 1 mΦ
₀
peak-to-peak and nonlinear errors of less than 2 mΦ
₀
peak-to-peak, which is sufficient for the readout of the gamma-ray TES arrays being developed. These results can provide guidelines for suppressing both the crosstalk and the nonlinear error to less than the criterion of TES spectrometers with typical energy-resolving ability.