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
18
Sep
2020
Efficient qubit measurement with a nonreciprocal microwave amplifier
The act of observing a quantum object fundamentally perturbs its state, resulting in a random walk toward an eigenstate of the measurement operator. Ideally, the measurement is responsible
for all dephasing of the quantum state. In practice, imperfections in the measurement apparatus limit or corrupt the flow of information required for quantum feedback protocols, an effect quantified by the measurement efficiency. Here we demonstrate the efficient measurement of a superconducting qubit using a nonreciprocal parametric amplifier to directly monitor the microwave field of a readout cavity. By mitigating the losses between the cavity and the amplifier we achieve a measurement efficiency of 72%. The directionality of the amplifier protects the readout cavity and qubit from excess backaction caused by amplified vacuum fluctuations. In addition to providing tools for further improving the fidelity of strong projective measurement, this work creates a testbed for the experimental study of ideal weak measurements, and it opens the way towards quantum feedback protocols based on weak measurement such as state stabilization or error correction.
17
Sep
2020
Tutorial: Gate-based superconducting quantum computing
In this tutorial, we introduce basic conceptual elements to understand and build a gate-based superconducting quantum computing system.
16
Sep
2020
Photon-Number Dependent Hamiltonian Engineering for Cavities
Cavity resonators are promising resources for quantum technology, while native nonlinear interactions for cavities are typically too weak to provide the level of quantum control required
to deliver complex targeted operations. Here we investigate a scheme to engineer a target Hamiltonian for photonic cavities using ancilla qubits. By off-resonantly driving dispersively coupled ancilla qubits, we develop an optimized approach to engineering an arbitrary photon-number dependent (PND) Hamiltonian for the cavities while minimizing the operation errors. The engineered Hamiltonian admits various applications including canceling unwanted cavity self-Kerr interactions, creating higher-order nonlinearities for quantum simulations, and designing quantum gates resilient to noise. Our scheme can be implemented with coupled microwave cavities and transmon qubits in superconducting circuit systems.
15
Sep
2020
Continuous measurements for control of superconducting quantum circuits
Developments over the last two decades have opened the path towards quantum technologies in many quantum systems, such as cold atoms, trapped ions, cavity-quantum electrodynamics (QED),
and circuit-QED. However the fragility of quantum states to the effects of measurement and decoherence still poses one of the greatest challenges in quantum technology. An imperative capability in this path is quantum feedback, as it enhances the control possibilities and allows for prolonging coherence times through quantum error correction. While changing parameters from shot to shot of an experiment or procedure can be considered feedback, quantum mechanics also allows for the intriguing possibility of performing feedback operations during the measurement process itself. This broader approach to measurements leads to the concepts of weak measurement, quantum trajectories and numerous types of feedback with no classical analogues. These types of processes are the primary focus of this review. We introduce the concept of quantum feedback in the context of circuit QED, an experimental platform with significant potential in quantum feedback and technology. We then discuss several experiments and see how they elucidate the concepts of continuous measurements and feedback. We conclude with an overview of coherent feedback, with application to fault-tolerant error correction.
12
Sep
2020
Investigation of controls of a superconducting quantum parametron under a strong pump field
Pumped at approximately twice the natural frequency, a Josephson parametric oscillator called parametron or Kerr parametric oscillator shows self-oscillation. Quantum annealing and
universal quantum computation using self-oscillating parametrons as qubits were proposed. However, controls of parametrons under the pump field are degraded by unwanted rapidly oscillating terms in the Hamiltonian, which is called counter rotating terms (CRTs) coming from the violation of the rotating wave approximation. Therefore, the pump field can be an intrinsic origin of the imperfection of controls of parameterons. Here, we theoretically study the effect of the CRTs on the accuracy of controls of a parametron: creation of a cat state and a single qubit gate along the x axis. It is shown that there is a trade-off relationship between the suppression of the nonadiabatic transitions and the validity of the rotating wave approximation in a conventional approach. We show that the tailored time dependence of the detuning of the pump field can suppress both of the nonadiabatic transitions and the disturbance of the state of the parametron due to the CRTs.
08
Sep
2020
Microwave Superconductivity
We give a broad overview of the history of microwave superconductivity and explore the technological developments that have followed from the unique electrodynamic properties of superconductors.
Their low loss properties enable resonators with high quality factors that can nevertheless handle extremely high current densities. This in turn enables superconducting particle accelerators, high-performance filters and analog electronics, including metamaterials, with extreme performance. The macroscopic quantum properties have enabled new generations of ultra-high-speed digital computing and extraordinarily sensitive detectors. The microscopic quantum properties have enabled large-scale quantum computers, which at their heart are essentially microwave-fueled quantum engines. We celebrate the rich history of microwave superconductivity and look to the promising future of this exciting branch of microwave technology.
Demonstration of a non-Abelian geometric controlled-Not gate in a superconducting circuit
Holonomies, arising from non-Abelian geometric transformations of quantum states in Hilbert space, offer a promising way for quantum computation. The non-community of these holonomies
renders them suitable for realization of a universal set of quantum logic gates, while the global geometric feature may result in some noise-resilient advantages. Here we report on the first on-chip realization of the non-Abelian geometric controlled-Not gate, which is a buidling block for constructing a holonomic quantum computer. The conditional dynamics is achieved in an all-to-all connected architecture involving multiple frequency-tunable superconducting qubits controllably coupled to a resonator; a holonomic gate between any two qubits can be implemented by tuning their frequencies on resonance with the resonator and applying a two-tone drive to one of them. The combination of the present gate and previously demonstrated holonomic single-qubit operations represents an all-holonomic approach to scalable quantum computation on a superconducting platform.
07
Sep
2020
Characterizing cryogenic amplifiers with a matched temperature-variable noise source
We present a cryogenic microwave noise source with characteristic impedance of 50 Ω that can be installed in a coaxial line of a cryostat. The bath temperature of the noise source
is continuously variable between 0.1 K and 5 K without causing significant back-action heating on the sample space. As a proof-of-concept experiment, we perform Y-factor measurements of an amplifier cascade that includes a traveling wave parametric amplifier and a commercial high electron mobility transistor amplifier. We observe system noise temperatures as low as 680+20−200 mK at 5.7 GHz corresponding to 1.5+0.1−0.7 excess photons. The system we present has immediate applications in the validation of solid-state qubit readout lines.
06
Sep
2020
Time molecules with periodically driven interacting qubits
We provide numerical evidence for a temporal quantum-mechanical interference phenomenon: time molecules (TM). A variety of such stroboscopic states are observed in the dynamics of two
interacting qubits subject to a periodic sequence of π-pulses with the period T. The TMs appear periodically in time and have a large duration, δtTM≫T. All TMs demonstrate an almost zero value of the total polarization and a strong enhancement of the entanglement entropy S up to the maximum value S=ln2 of a corresponding Bell state. The TMs are generated by the commensurability of the Floquet eigenvalues and the presence of maximally entangled Floquet eigenstates. The TMs remain stable with detuned system parameters and with an increased number of qubits. The TMs can be observed in microwave experiments with an array of superconducting qubits.
02
Sep
2020
Control and readout of a superconducting qubit using a photonic link
Delivering on the revolutionary promise of a universal quantum computer will require processors with millions of quantum bits (qubits). In superconducting quantum processors, each qubit
is individually addressed with microwave signal lines that connect room temperature electronics to the cryogenic environment of the quantum circuit. The complexity and heat load associated with the multiple coaxial lines per qubit limits the possible size of a processor to a few thousand qubits. Here we introduce a photonic link employing an optical fiber to guide modulated laser light from room temperature to a cryogenic photodetector, capable of delivering shot-noise limited microwave signals directly at millikelvin temperatures. By demonstrating high-fidelity control and readout of a superconducting qubit, we show that this photonic link can meet the stringent requirements of superconducting quantum information processing. Leveraging the low thermal conductivity and large intrinsic bandwidth of optical fiber enables efficient and massively multiplexed delivery of coherent microwave control pulses, providing a path towards a million-qubit universal quantum computer.