Cryogenic microwave filter cavity with a tunability greater than 5 GHz

A wide variety of applications of microwave cavities, such as measurement and control of superconducting qubits, magnonic resonators, and phase noise filters, would be well served by having a highly tunable microwave resonance. Often this tunability is desired in situ at low temperatures, where one can take advantage of superconducting cavities. To date, such cryogenic tuning while maintaining a high quality factor has been limited to ∼500 MHz. Here we demonstrate a three-dimensional superconducting microwave cavity that shares one wall with a pressurized volume of helium. Upon pressurization of the helium chamber, the microwave cavity is deformed, which results in in situ tuning of its resonant frequency by more than 5 GHz, greater than 60% of the original 8 GHz resonant frequency. The quality factor of the cavity remains approximately constant at ≈7 × 10³ over the entire range of tuning. As a demonstration of its usefulness, we implement a tunable cryogenic phase noise filter, which reduces the phase noise of our source by approximately 10 dB above 400 kHz.