Hydrogen crystals reduce dissipation in superconducting resonators

Abstract

We show that the internal quality factors of high-impedance superconducting resonators made of granular aluminum can be improved by coating them with micrometric films of solid parahydrogen molecular crystals. We attribute the average measured ≈8% reduction in dissipation to the absorption of stray terahertz radiation at the crystal-resonator interface and the subsequent dissipation of its energy in the form of phonons below the pair-breaking gap. Our results prove that contrary to expectations, replacing the vacuum dielectric atop a superconducting resonator can be beneficial, thanks to the added protection against Cooper pair-braking terahertz radiation. Moreover, at the level of internal quality factors in the 105 range, the hydrogen crystal does not introduce additional losses, which is promising for embedding impurities to couple to superconducting thin-film devices in hybrid quantum architectures.