THz Sommerfeld Wave Propagation on Superconducting Niobium Wire for Millimeter-Wave Interconnects

Although there has been a stupendous development of superconducting microwave circuits, scalability and transmission of quantum information remain important issues. One approach involves the transduction of quantum information from microwave to millimeter-wave frequencies prior to transmission. For efficient transmission of THz waves, the development of millimeter-wave interconnects is a vital challenge. In this pursuit, we propose to transmit Sommerfeld waves in the THz regime on the surface of a single superconducting Niobium wire connected between a pair of horn antennas and W-band (75 – 110GHz) waveguides. The Sommerfeld mode on single conductors in the THz frequency range have demonstrated very low losses with room temperature conductors. Compared to the room temperature, our calculations show an increase in conductivity of superconducting Niobium by two orders of magnitude, which indicates significantly lower losses are possible for links at a few Kelvin.