I am going to post here all newly submitted articles on the arXiv related to superconducting circuits. If your article has been accidentally forgotten, feel free to contact me
31
Mrz
2020
Engineering the Level Structure of a Giant Artificial Atom in Waveguide Quantum Electrodynamics
Engineering light-matter interactions at the quantum level has been central to the pursuit of quantum optics for decades. Traditionally, this has been done by coupling emitters, typically
natural atoms and ions, to quantized electromagnetic fields in optical and microwave cavities. In these systems, the emitter is approximated as an idealized dipole, as its physical size is orders of magnitude smaller than the wavelength of light. Recently, artificial atoms made from superconducting circuits have enabled new frontiers in light-matter coupling, including the study of „giant“ atoms which cannot be approximated as simple dipoles. Here, we explore a new implementation of a giant artificial atom, formed from a transmon qubit coupled to propagating microwaves at multiple points along an open transmission line. The nature of this coupling allows the qubit radiation field to interfere with itself leading to some striking giant-atom effects. For instance, we observe strong frequency-dependent couplings of the qubit energy levels to the electromagnetic modes of the transmission line. Combined with the ability to in situ tune the qubit energy levels, we show that we can modify the relative coupling rates of multiple qubit transitions by more than an order of magnitude. By doing so, we engineer a metastable excited state, allowing us to operate the giant transmon as an effective lambda system where we clearly demonstrate electromagnetically induced transparency.
Probing Environmental Spin Polarization with Superconducting Flux Qubits
We present measurements of the dynamics of a polarized magnetic environment coupled to the We present measurements of the dynamics of a polarized magnetic environment coupled to the
flux degree of freedom of rf-SQUID flux qubits. The qubits are used as both sources of polarizing field and detectors of the environmental polarization. We probe dynamics at timescales from 5\,μs to 5\,ms and at temperatures between 12.5 and 22 mK. The measured polarization versus temperature provides strong evidence for a phase transition at a temperature of 5.7±0.3 mK. Furthermore, the environmental polarization grows initially as t√, consistent with spin diffusion dynamics. However, spin diffusion model deviates from data at long timescales, suggesting that a different phenomenon is responsible for the low-frequency behavior. A simple 1/f model can fit the data at all time scales but it requires empirical low- and high-frequency cutoffs. We argue that these results are consistent with an environment comprised of random clusters of spins, with fast spin diffusion dynamics within the clusters and slow fluctuations of the total moments of the clusters.
Transferring entangled states of photonic cat-state qubits in circuit QED
We propose a method for transferring quantum entangled states of two photonic cat-state qubits (cqubits) from two microwave cavities to the other two microwave cavities. This proposal
is realized by using four microwave cavities coupled to a superconducting flux qutrit. Because of using four cavities with different frequencies, the inter-cavity crosstalk is significantly reduced. Since only one coupler qutrit is used, the circuit resources is minimized. The entanglement transfer is completed with a single-step operation only, thus this proposal is quite simple. The third energy level of the coupler qutrit is not populated during the state transfer, therefore decoherence from the higher energy level is greatly suppressed. Our numerical simulations show that high-fidelity transfer of two-cqubit entangled states from two transmission line resonators to the other two transmission line resonators is feasible with current circuit QED technology. This proposal is universal and can be applied to accomplish the same task in a wide range of physical systems, such as four microwave or optical cavities, which are coupled to a natural or artificial three-level atom.
30
Mrz
2020
Primary thermometry of propagating microwaves in the quantum regime
The ability to control and measure the temperature of propagating microwave modes down to very low temperatures is indispensable for quantum information processing, and may open opportunities
for studies of heat transport at the nanoscale, also in the quantum regime. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate primary thermometry of propagating microwaves using a transmon-type superconducting circuit. Our device operates continuously, with a sensitivity down to 4×10−4 photons/Hz−−−√ and a bandwidth of 40 MHz. We measure the thermal occupation of the modes of a highly attenuated coaxial cable in a range of 0.001 to 0.4 thermal photons, corresponding to a temperature range from 35 mK to 210 mK at a frequency around 5 GHz. To increase the radiation temperature in a controlled fashion, we either inject calibrated, wideband digital noise, or heat the device and its environment. This thermometry scheme can find applications in benchmarking and characterization of cryogenic microwave setups, temperature measurements in hybrid quantum systems, and quantum thermodynamics.
Entangling superconducting qubits through an analogue wormhole
We propose an experimental setup to test the role of curved spacetime on entanglement extraction from the vacuum of a quantum field to a pair of artificial atoms. In particular, we
consider two superconducting qubits coupled to a dc-SQUID array embedded into an open microwave transmission line, where a suitable external bias is able to mimic a spacetime containing a traversable wormhole. We find that the amount of vacuum entanglement that can be extracted by the superconducting qubits depends on the parameters of the wormhole. At some distances qubits that would remain separable in flat spacetime become entangled due to the presence of the effective wormhole background.
29
Mrz
2020
Universal non-adiabatic control of small-gap superconducting qubits
Resonant transverse driving of a two-level system as viewed in the rotating frame couples two degenerate states at the Rabi frequency, an amazing equivalence that emerges in quantum
mechanics. While spectacularly successful at controlling natural and artificial quantum systems, certain limitations may arise (e.g., the achievable gate speed) due to non-idealities like the counter-rotating term. Here, we explore a complementary approach to quantum control based on non-resonant, non-adiabatic driving of a longitudinal parameter in the presence of a fixed transverse coupling. We introduce a superconducting composite qubit (CQB), formed from two capacitively coupled transmon qubits, which features a small avoided crossing — smaller than the environmental temperature — between two energy levels. We control this low-frequency CQB using solely baseband pulses, non-adiabatic transitions, and coherent Landau-Zener interference to achieve fast, high-fidelity, single-qubit operations with Clifford fidelities exceeding 99.7%. We also perform coupled qubit operations between two low-frequency CQBs. This work demonstrates that universal non-adiabatic control of low-frequency qubits is feasible using solely baseband pulses.
27
Mrz
2020
Thermally pumped on-chip maser
We present a theoretical model of an on-chip three level maser in a superconducting circuit based on a single artificial atom and pumped by temperature gradient between thermal baths
coupled to different interlevel transitions. We show that maser powers of the order of few femtowatts, well exceeding the resolution of the sensitive bolometry, can be achieved with typical circuit parameters. We also demonstrate that population inversion in the artificial atom can be detected without measuring coherent radiation output of the maser. For that purpose, the system should operate as a three terminal heat transport device. The hallmark of population inversion is the influx of heat power into the weakly coupled output terminal even though its temperature exceeds the temperatures of the two other terminals.
25
Mrz
2020
Simulating finite-time quantum isothermal processes with generic superconducting quantum circuit
The finite-time isothermal process is fundamental in quantum thermodynamics yet complicated with combination of changing control parameters and the interaction with the thermal bath.
Such complexity prevents the direct application of the traditional thermodynamics measurement of the relevant quantities. In this paper, we provide a discrete-step method to separate the work done and the heat exchange in the isothermal process by decomposing the process into piecewise adiabatic and isochoric processes. The piecewise control scheme makes it possible to simulate the whole process on a generic quantum computer, which provides a new platform to experimentally study quantum thermodynamics. We implement the simulation on ibmqx2 to show the C/τ scaling of the extra work in the finite-time isothermal process.
24
Mrz
2020
Vortex-Meissner phase transition induced by two-tone-drive-engineered artificial gauge potential in the fermionic ladder constructed by superconducting qubit circuits
We propose to periodically modulate the onsite energy via two-tone drives, which can be furthermore used to engineer artificial gauge potential. As an example, we show that the fermionic
ladder model penetrated with effective magnetic flux can be constructed by superconducting flux qubits using such two-tone-drive-engineered artificial gauge potential. In this superconducting system, the single-particle ground state can range from vortex phase to Meissner phase due to the competition between the interleg coupling strength and the effective magnetic flux. We also present the method to experimentally measure the chiral currents by the single-particle Rabi oscillations between adjacent qubits. In contrast to previous methods of generating artifical gauge potential, our proposal does not need the aid of auxiliary couplers and in principle remains valid only if the qubit circuit maintains enough anharmonicity. The fermionic ladder model with effective magnetic flux can also be interpreted as one-dimensional spin-orbit-coupled model, which thus lay a foundation towards the realization of quantum spin Hall effect.
Fast tunable high Q-factor superconducting microwave resonators
We present fast tunable superconducting microwave resonators fabricated from planar NbN on a sapphire substrate. The 3λ/4 wavelength resonators are tuning fork shaped and tuned by
passing a dc current which controls the kinetic inductance of the tuning fork prongs. The λ/4 section from the open end operates as an integrated impedance converter which creates a nearly perfect short for microwave currents at the dc terminal coupling points, thus preventing microwave energy leakage through the dc lines. We measure an internal quality factor Qint>105 over the entire tuning range. We demonstrate a tuning range of >3% and tuning response times as short as 20 ns for the maximum achievable detuning. Due to the quasi-fractal design, the resonators are resilient to magnetic fields of up to 0.5 T.