Lecture on “Superconducting quantum electronics”

Pascal Febvre received his diploma of Physics and Chemistry from the “Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de la ville de Paris” (ESPCI) french “Grandes Ecoles” in 1990. He received his Ph.D. diploma from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie — Paris VI in 1995. His Ph.D. work was performed at the laboratory of radio-astronomy of the Observatory of Paris where he developed several superconducting receivers based on Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor (SIS) mixers in the 380–750 GHz range for balloon-borne experiments. Assoc-Prof. Febvre also spent 18 months (1992-1993) at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA) in Pasadena- California to develop an SIS mixer for an airborne experiment. In 1995-1997, he developed, as instrument project manager, the french-Swedish balloon-borne experiment PIROG8, which successfully flew in September 97. This experiment was conducted between Stokholm and Paris Observatories, the ESTEC technology center of the European Space Agency (ESA), a small Swedish private company, ACR, and the Swedish (SSC) and french (CNES) space agencies. This experiment was the first semi-space project to carry a superconducting submillimeter heterodyne receiver in the 424–440 GHz range in order to detect molecular oxygen in the interstellar space and also ozone in the upper stratosphere through limb sounding.

In 1997, Assoc-Prof. Febvre joined the LAHC laboratory (now IMEP-LAHC) as a tenure-track associate-professor at the University of Savoie (now Université Savoie Mont Blanc) where he built a research activity aimed at developing fast digital superconducting electronics based on the Rapid Single-Flux-Quantum (RSFQ) technique that processes magnetic flux quanta. He was the scientific coordinator at UNIV-SAVOIE in the HyperScan project of the French Research Agency (ANR) concerning the design of microwave superconducting analog-to-digital converter circuits with the world-level CEA-LETI facilities in France, for applications in the field of space telecommunications (HyperScan project), and in the development of THz HTc superconducting receivers (T-SUN project). He participated in the S-Pulse European project of the 7th frame-work programme focused on the development of digital superconducting electronics at European level.

He is involved in the development of digital Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUID) magnetic sensors for Geophysics applications with the Low-Noise Underground Laboratory (LSBB) of Rustrel in France, where he manages the activities connected to magnetometry. He has been or is the scientific coordinator of several bilateral projects with Germany, South Africa, Ukraine and Turkey.
He organized the national French days of superconducting electronics on a yearly basis between 2004 and 2012, and is involved in the dissemination of superconducting electronics in Europe through newsletters, workshops (FLUXONICS workshops every two years since 2001), summer schools (FLUXONICS summer schools in 2016 and 2018) and courses given at conferences (EUCAS2017 ; ICSM2018).
Pascal Febvre was elected in the board of the European Society for Applied Superconductivity (http://www.esas.org) for the 2009-2015 period and 2019-2025 periods in the steering committee of the FLUXONICS European Society (http://www.fluxonics.eu) (2008-2010 and 2011-2013). He is doing his second mandate as president of the Fluxonics Society (2013-2016 and 2016-2019).
Pascal Febvre owns 50 peer-reviewed articles in international journals, 2 book chapters, 1 dictionary of Physics (four editions) and more than 120 communications in International Journals and Conferences, including 27 invited presentations to international workshops and conferences (for example ISEC2009, ICSM2012, SSV2017, EUCAS2017).