High sensitivity characterization of the nonlinear electric susceptibility of a glass ceramic in the microwave range

The nonlinear electric susceptibility of a glass ceramic is characterized in the microwave range by measuring intermodulation of two high-power signals. To achieve the necessary sensitivity for dielectric nonlinearities, the setup ensures that the measured intermodulation can be ascribed to the material under test while all other intermodulation sources are suppressed. This is achieved by coupling three dielectric resonators in a cut-off waveguide. The third order nonlinearity of the glass ceramic is found to be χ3/εr = (1.6 ± 0.8) × 10−15 m2/V2 at 950 MHz. The magnitude is comparable to the previously measured high-end sintered ceramics. The power of the intermodulation signal as a function of the input power deviates from the simple 3 dB/dB scaling and can be modeled by linear-nonlinear interaction.