Hydrogen as a Source of Flux Noise in SQUIDs

Superconducting qubits are hampered by flux noise produced by surface spins from a variety of microscopic sources. Recent experiments indicated that hydrogen (H) atoms may be one of those sources. Using density functional theory calculations, we report that H atoms either embedded in, or adsorbed on, an a-Al2O3(0001) surface have sizeable spin moments ranging from 0.81 to 0.87 uB with energy barriers for spin reorientation as low as ~10 mK. Furthermore, H adatoms on the surface attract gas molecules such as O2, producing new spin sources. We propose coating the surface with graphene to eliminate H-induced surface spins and to protect the surface from other adsorbates.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

The dielectric properties of soil-water mixtures at microwave frequencies

Recent measurements on the dielectric constants of soil-water mixtures show the existence of two frequency regions in which the dielectric behavior of these mixtures was quite different. At the frequencies of 1.4 GHz to 5 GHz, there were strong evidences that the variations of the dielectric (epsilon) with water content (W) depended on soil type. While the real part of epsilon for sandy soils rose rapidly with the increase in W, epsilon for the high-clay content soils rose only slowly with W. As a consequence, epsilon was generally higher for the sandy soils than for the high-clay content soils at a given W. On the other hand, most of the measurements at frequencies 1 GHz indicated the increase of epsilon with W independent of soil types. At a given W, epsilon' (sandy soil) approximately equals epsilon (high-clay content soil) within the precision of the measurements. These observational features can be satisfactorily interpreted in terms of a simple dielectric relaxation model, with an appropriate choice of the mean relaxation frequency f(m) and the range of the activation energy (beta). It was found that smaller f(m) and larger beta were required for the high-clay content soils than the sandy soils in order to be consistent with the measured data