High-Fidelity, Frequency-Flexible Two-Qubit Fluxonium Gates with a Transmon Coupler

  1. Leon Ding,
  2. Max Hays,
  3. Youngkyu Sung,
  4. Bharath Kannan,
  5. Junyoung An,
  6. Agustin Di Paolo,
  7. Amir H. Karamlou,
  8. Thomas M. Hazard,
  9. Kate Azar,
  10. David K. Kim,
  11. Bethany M. Niedzielski,
  12. Alexander Melville,
  13. Mollie E. Schwartz,
  14. Jonilyn L. Yoder,
  15. Terry P. Orlando,
  16. Simon Gustavsson,
  17. Jeffrey A. Grover,
  18. Kyle Serniak,
  19. and William D. Oliver
We propose and demonstrate an architecture for fluxonium-fluxonium two-qubit gates mediated by transmon couplers (FTF, for fluxonium-transmon-fluxonium). Relative to architectures that
exclusively rely on a direct coupling between fluxonium qubits, FTF enables stronger couplings for gates using non-computational states while simultaneously suppressing the static controlled-phase entangling rate (ZZ) down to kHz levels, all without requiring strict parameter matching. Here we implement FTF with a flux-tunable transmon coupler and demonstrate a microwave-activated controlled-Z (CZ) gate whose operation frequency can be tuned over a 2 GHz range, adding frequency allocation freedom for FTF’s in larger systems. Across this range, state-of-the-art CZ gate fidelities were observed over many bias points and reproduced across the two devices characterized in this work. After optimizing both the operation frequency and the gate duration, we achieved peak CZ fidelities in the 99.85-99.9\% range. Finally, we implemented model-free reinforcement learning of the pulse parameters to boost the mean gate fidelity up to 99.922±0.009%, averaged over roughly an hour between scheduled training runs. Beyond the microwave-activated CZ gate we present here, FTF can be applied to a variety of other fluxonium gate schemes to improve gate fidelities and passively reduce unwanted ZZ interactions.

Nonreciprocal devices based on voltage-tunable junctions

  1. Catherine Leroux,
  2. Adrian Parra-Rodriguez,
  3. Ross Shillito,
  4. Agustin Di Paolo,
  5. William D. Oliver,
  6. Charles M. Marcus,
  7. Morten Kjaergaard,
  8. András Gyenis,
  9. and Alexandre Blais
We propose to couple the flux degree of freedom of one mode with the charge degree of freedom of a second mode in a hybrid superconducting-semiconducting architecture. Nonreciprocity
can arise in this architecture in the presence of external static magnetic fields alone. We leverage this property to engineer a passive on-chip gyrator, the fundamental two-port nonreciprocal device which can be used to build other nonreciprocal devices such as circulators. We analytically and numerically investigate how the nonlinearity of the interaction, circuit disorder and parasitic couplings affect the scattering response of the gyrator.

Demonstration of tunable three-body interactions between superconducting qubits

  1. Tim Menke,
  2. William P. Banner,
  3. Thomas R. Bergamaschi,
  4. Agustin Di Paolo,
  5. Antti Vepsäläinen,
  6. Steven J. Weber,
  7. Roni Winik,
  8. Alexander Melville,
  9. Bethany M. Niedzielski,
  10. Danna Rosenberg,
  11. Kyle Serniak,
  12. Mollie E. Schwartz,
  13. Jonilyn L. Yoder,
  14. Alán Aspuru-Guzik,
  15. Simon Gustavsson,
  16. Jeffrey A. Grover,
  17. Cyrus F. Hirjibehedin,
  18. Andrew J. Kerman,
  19. and William D. Oliver
Nonpairwise multi-qubit interactions present a useful resource for quantum information processors. Their implementation would facilitate more efficient quantum simulations of molecules
and combinatorial optimization problems, and they could simplify error suppression and error correction schemes. Here we present a superconducting circuit architecture in which a coupling module mediates 2-local and 3-local interactions between three flux qubits by design. The system Hamiltonian is estimated via multi-qubit pulse sequences that implement Ramsey-type interferometry between all neighboring excitation manifolds in the system. The 3-local interaction is coherently tunable over several MHz via the coupler flux biases and can be turned off, which is important for applications in quantum annealing, analog quantum simulation, and gate-model quantum computation.

Extensible circuit-QED architecture via amplitude- and frequency-variable microwaves

  1. Agustin Di Paolo,
  2. Catherine Leroux,
  3. Thomas M. Hazard,
  4. Kyle Serniak,
  5. Simon Gustavsson,
  6. Alexandre Blais,
  7. and William D. Oliver
We introduce a circuit-QED architecture combining fixed-frequency qubits and microwave-driven couplers. In the appropriate frame, the drive parameters appear as tunable knobs enabling
selective two-qubit coupling and coherent-error suppression. We moreover introduce a set of controlled-phase gates based on drive-amplitude and drive-frequency modulation. We develop a theoretical framework based on Floquet theory to model microwave-activated interactions with time-dependent drive parameters, which we also use for pulse shaping. We perform numerical simulations of the gate fidelity for realistic circuit parameters, and discuss the impact of drive-induced decoherence. We estimate average gate fidelities beyond 99.9% for all-microwave controlled-phase operations with gate times in the range 50−120ns. These two-qubit gates can operate over a large drive-frequency bandwidth and in a broad range of circuit parameters, thereby improving extensibility. We address the frequency allocation problem for this architecture using perturbation theory, demonstrating that qubit, coupler and drive frequencies can be chosen such that undesired static and driven interactions remain bounded in a multi-qubit device. Our numerical methods are useful for describing the time-evolution of driven systems in the adiabatic limit, and are applicable to a wide variety of circuit-QED setups.

On-Demand Directional Photon Emission using Waveguide Quantum Electrodynamics

  1. Bharath Kannan,
  2. Aziza Almanakly,
  3. Youngkyu Sung,
  4. Agustin Di Paolo,
  5. David A. Rower,
  6. Jochen Braumüller,
  7. Alexander Melville,
  8. Bethany M. Niedzielski,
  9. Amir Karamlou,
  10. Kyle Serniak,
  11. Antti Vepsäläinen,
  12. Mollie E. Schwartz,
  13. Jonilyn L. Yoder,
  14. Roni Winik,
  15. Joel I-Jan Wang,
  16. Terry P. Orlando,
  17. Simon Gustavsson,
  18. Jeffrey A. Grover,
  19. and William D. Oliver
Routing quantum information between non-local computational nodes is a foundation for extensible networks of quantum processors. Quantum information can be transferred between arbitrary
nodes by photons that propagate between them, or by resonantly coupling nearby nodes. Notably, conventional approaches involving propagating photons have limited fidelity due to photon loss and are often unidirectional, whereas architectures that use direct resonant coupling are bidirectional in principle, but can generally accommodate only a few local nodes. Here, we demonstrate high-fidelity, on-demand, bidirectional photon emission using an artificial molecule comprising two superconducting qubits strongly coupled to a waveguide. Quantum interference between the photon emission pathways from the molecule generate single photons that selectively propagate in a chosen direction. This architecture is capable of both photon emission and capture, and can be tiled in series to form an extensible network of quantum processors with all-to-all connectivity.

Realizing Repeated Quantum Error Correction in a Distance-Three Surface Code

  1. Sebastian Krinner,
  2. Nathan Lacroix,
  3. Ants Remm,
  4. Agustin Di Paolo,
  5. Elie Genois,
  6. Catherine Leroux,
  7. Christoph Hellings,
  8. Stefania Lazar,
  9. Francois Swiadek,
  10. Johannes Herrmann,
  11. Graham J. Norris,
  12. Christian Kraglund Andersen,
  13. Markus Müller,
  14. Alexandre Blais,
  15. Christopher Eichler,
  16. and Andreas Wallraff
Quantum computers hold the promise of solving computational problems which are intractable using conventional methods. For fault-tolerant operation quantum computers must correct errors
occurring due to unavoidable decoherence and limited control accuracy. Here, we demonstrate quantum error correction using the surface code, which is known for its exceptionally high tolerance to errors. Using 17 physical qubits in a superconducting circuit we encode quantum information in a distance-three logical qubit building up on recent distance-two error detection experiments. In an error correction cycle taking only 1.1μs, we demonstrate the preservation of four cardinal states of the logical qubit. Repeatedly executing the cycle, we measure and decode both bit- and phase-flip error syndromes using a minimum-weight perfect-matching algorithm in an error-model-free approach and apply corrections in postprocessing. We find a low error probability of 3% per cycle when rejecting experimental runs in which leakage is detected. The measured characteristics of our device agree well with a numerical model. Our demonstration of repeated, fast and high-performance quantum error correction cycles, together with recent advances in ion traps, support our understanding that fault-tolerant quantum computation will be practically realizable.

Distinguishing multi-spin interactions from lower-order effects

  1. Thomas R. Bergamaschi,
  2. Tim Menke,
  3. William P. Banner,
  4. Agustin Di Paolo,
  5. Steven J. Weber,
  6. Cyrus F. Hirjibehedin,
  7. Andrew J. Kerman,
  8. and William D. Oliver
Multi-spin interactions can be engineered with artificial quantum spins. However, it is challenging to verify such interactions experimentally. Here we describe two methods to characterize
the n-local coupling of n spins. First, we analyze the variation of the transition energy of the static system as a function of local spin fields. Standard measurement techniques are employed to distinguish n-local interactions between up to five spins from lower-order contributions in the presence of noise and spurious fields and couplings. Second, we show a detection technique that relies on time dependent driving of the coupling term. Generalizations to larger system sizes are analyzed for both static and dynamic detection methods, and we find that the dynamic method is asymptotically optimal when increasing the system size. The proposed methods enable robust exploration of multi-spin interactions across a broad range of both coupling strengths and qubit modalities.

Superconducting coupler with exponentially large on-off ratio

  1. Catherine Leroux,
  2. Agustin Di Paolo,
  3. and Alexandre Blais
Tunable two-qubit couplers offer an avenue to mitigate errors in multiqubit superconducting quantum processors. However, most couplers operate in a narrow frequency band and target
specific couplings, such as the spurious ZZ interaction. We introduce a superconducting coupler that alleviates these limitations by suppressing all two-qubit interactions with an exponentially large on-off ratio and without the need for fine-tuning. Our approach is based on a bus mode supplemented by an ancillary nonlinear resonator mode. Driving the ancillary mode leads to a coupler-state-dependent field displacement in the resonator which, in turn, results in an exponential suppression of real and virtual two-qubit interactions with respect to the drive power. A superconducting circuit implementation supporting the proposed mechanism is presented.

Quantum transport and localization in 1d and 2d tight-binding lattices

  1. Amir H. Karamlou,
  2. Jochen Braumüller,
  3. Yariv Yanay,
  4. Agustin Di Paolo,
  5. Patrick Harrington,
  6. Bharath Kannan,
  7. David Kim,
  8. Morten Kjaergaard,
  9. Alexander Melville,
  10. Sarah Muschinske,
  11. Bethany Niedzielski,
  12. Antti Vepsäläinen,
  13. Roni Winik,
  14. Jonilyn L. Yoder,
  15. Mollie Schwartz,
  16. Charles Tahan,
  17. Terry P. Orlando,
  18. Simon Gustavsson,
  19. and William D. Oliver
Particle transport and localization phenomena in condensed-matter systems can be modeled using a tight-binding lattice Hamiltonian. The ideal experimental emulation of such a model
utilizes simultaneous, high-fidelity control and readout of each lattice site in a highly coherent quantum system. Here, we experimentally study quantum transport in one-dimensional and two-dimensional tight-binding lattices, emulated by a fully controllable 3×3 array of superconducting qubits. We probe the propagation of entanglement throughout the lattice and extract the degree of localization in the Anderson and Wannier-Stark regimes in the presence of site-tunable disorder strengths and gradients. Our results are in quantitative agreement with numerical simulations and match theoretical predictions based on the tight-binding model. The demonstrated level of experimental control and accuracy in extracting the system observables of interest will enable the exploration of larger, interacting lattices where numerical simulations become intractable.

Accurate methods for the analysis of strong-drive effects in parametric gates

  1. Alexandru Petrescu,
  2. Camille Le Calonnec,
  3. Catherine Leroux,
  4. Agustin Di Paolo,
  5. Pranav Mundada,
  6. Sara Sussman,
  7. Andrei Vrajitoarea,
  8. Andrew A. Houck,
  9. and Alexandre Blais
The ability to perform fast, high-fidelity entangling gates is an important requirement for a viable quantum processor. In practice, achieving fast gates often comes with the penalty
of strong-drive effects that are not captured by the rotating-wave approximation. These effects can be analyzed in simulations of the gate protocol, but those are computationally costly and often hide the physics at play. Here, we show how to efficiently extract gate parameters by directly solving a Floquet eigenproblem using exact numerics and a perturbative analytical approach. As an example application of this toolkit, we study the space of parametric gates generated between two fixed-frequency transmon qubits connected by a parametrically driven coupler. Our analytical treatment, based on time-dependent Schrieffer-Wolff perturbation theory, yields closed-form expressions for gate frequencies and spurious interactions, and is valid for strong drives. From these calculations, we identify optimal regimes of operation for different types of gates including iSWAP, controlled-Z, and CNOT. These analytical results are supplemented by numerical Floquet computations from which we directly extract drive-dependent gate parameters. This approach has a considerable computational advantage over full simulations of time evolutions. More generally, our combined analytical and numerical strategy allows us to characterize two-qubit gates involving parametrically driven interactions, and can be applied to gate optimization and cross-talk mitigation such as the cancellation of unwanted ZZ interactions in multi-qubit architectures.