Design, fabrication, and testing of a high-speed analog sampler

The authors describe the design, fabrication, and first successful operation in the gigahertz frequency range of a Josephson-junction-based sampling circuit designed to provide 6 b of resolution ( approximately 35 dB) and 10 GHz or more of bandwidth. The first experimental demonstration of a prototype circuit sampling a sine wave at up to 1 GHz is reported. This sampler has properties that make it amenable to incorporation into complex, mixed-analog/digital integrated circuits. Such a circuit can be used in the implementation of such signal processing subsystem components as a transient waveform data recorder, a programmable analog-binary correlator, and a flash analog-to-digital converter.<>