Experimental demonstration of work fluctuations along a shortcut to adiabaticity with a superconducting Xmon qubit

In a shortcut-to-adiabaticity‘ (STA) protocol, the counter-diabatic Hamiltonian, which suppresses the non-adiabatic transition of a reference adiabatic‘ trajectory, induces
a quantum uncertainty of the work cost in the framework of quantum thermodynamics. Following a theory derived recently [Funo et al 2017 Phys. Rev. Lett. 118 100602], we perform an experimental measurement of the STA work statistics in a high-quality superconducting Xmon qubit. Through the frozen-Hamiltonian and frozen-population techniques, we experimentally realize the two-point measurement of the work distribution for given initial eigenstates. Our experimental statistics verify (i) the conservation of the average STA work and (ii) the equality between the STA excess of work fluctuations and the quantum geometric tensor.

Tuning coupling between superconducting resonators with collective qubits

By coupling multiple artificial atoms simultaneously to two superconducting resonators, we construct a quantum switch that controls the resonator-resonator coupling strength from zero
to a large value proportional to the number of qubits. This process is implemented by switching the qubits among different \emph{subradiant states}, where the microwave photons decayed from different qubits interfere destructively so that the coupling strength keeps stable against environmental noise. Based on a two-step control scheme, the coupling strength can be switched at the \emph{nanosecond} scale while the qubits are maintained at the coherent optimal point. We also use the quantum switch to connect multiple resonators with a programmable network topology, and demonstrate its potential applications in quantum simulation and scalable quantum information storage and processing.