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
30
Jun
2022
Magnetometry of neurons using a superconducting qubit
We demonstrate magnetometry of cultured neurons on a polymeric film using a superconducting flux qubit that works as a sensitive magnetometer in a microscale area. The neurons are cultured
in Fe3+ rich medium to increase magnetization signal generated by the electron spins originating from the ions. The magnetometry is performed by insulating the qubit device from the laden neurons with the polymeric film while keeping the distance between them around several micrometers. By changing temperature (12.5 – 200 mK) and a magnetic field (2.5 – 12.5 mT), we observe a clear magnetization signal from the neurons that is well above the control magnetometry of the polymeric film itself. From electron spin resonance (ESR) spectrum measured at 10 K, the magnetization signal is identified to originate from electron spins of iron ions in neurons. This technique to detect a bio-spin system can be extended to achieve ESR spectroscopy at the single-cell level, which will give the spectroscopic fingerprint of cells.
29
Jun
2022
Entangling remote microwave quantum computers with hybrid entanglement swap and variational distillation
Superconducting microwave circuits with Josephson junctions are a major platform for quantum computing. To unleash their full capabilities, the cooperative operation of multiple microwave
superconducting circuits is required. Therefore, designing an efficient protocol to distribute microwave entanglement remotely becomes a crucial open problem. Here, we propose a continuous-variable entanglement-swap approach based on optical-microwave entanglement generation, which can boost the ultimate rate by two orders of magnitude at state-of-the-art parameter region, compared with traditional approaches. We further empower the protocol with a hybrid variational entanglement distillation component to provide huge advantage in the infidelity-versus-success-probability trade-off. Our protocol can be realized with near-term device performance, and is robust against non-perfections such as optical loss and noise. Therefore, our work provides a practical method to realize efficient quantum links for superconducting microwave quantum computers.
Structurally stable subharmonic regime of a driven quantum Josephson circuit
Driven quantum nonlinear oscillators, while essential for quantum technologies, are generally prone to complex chaotic dynamics that fall beyond the reach of perturbative analysis.
By focusing on subharmonic bifurcations of a harmonically driven oscillator, we provide a recipe for the choice of the oscillator’s parameters that ensures a regular dynamical behavior independently of the driving strength. We show that this suppression of chaotic phenomena is compatible with a strong quantum nonlinear effect reflected by the confinement rate in the degenerate manifold spanned by stable subharmonic orbits.
Superradiant emission spectra of a two-qubit system in circuit quantum electrodynamics
In this paper we study the spontaneous emission spectra and the emission decay rates of a simplest atom system that exhibits sub- and superradiant properties: a system which consists
of two artificial atoms (superconducting qubits) embedded in a one-dimensional open waveguide. The calculations are based on the method of the transition operator which was firstly introduced by R. H. Lehmberg to theoretically describe the spontaneous emission of two-level atoms in a free space. We obtain the explicit expressions for the photon radiation spectra and the emission decay rates for different initial two-qubit configurations with one and two excitations. For every initial state we calculate the radiation spectra and the emission decay rates for different effective distances between qubits. In every case, a decay rate is compared with a single qubit decay to show the superradiant or subradiant nature of a two-qubit decay with a given initial state.
Precision measurement of the microwave dielectric loss of sapphire in the quantum regime with parts-per-billion sensitivity
Dielectric loss is known to limit state-of-the-art superconducting qubit lifetimes. Recent experiments imply upper bounds on bulk dielectric loss tangents on the order of 100 parts-per-billion,
but because these inferences are drawn from fully fabricated devices with many loss channels, they do not definitively implicate or exonerate the dielectric. To resolve this ambiguity, we have devised a measurement method capable of separating and resolving bulk dielectric loss with a sensitivity at the level of 5 parts-per-billion. The method, which we call the dielectric dipper, involves the in-situ insertion of a dielectric sample into a high-quality microwave cavity mode. Smoothly varying the sample’s participation in the cavity mode enables a differential measurement of the sample’s dielectric loss tangent. The dielectric dipper can probe the low-power behavior of dielectrics at cryogenic temperatures, and does so without the need for any lithographic process, enabling controlled comparisons of substrate materials and processing techniques. We demonstrate the method with measurements of EFG sapphire, from which we infer a bulk loss tangent of 62(7)×10−9 and a substrate-air interface loss tangent of 12(2)×10−4. For a typical transmon, this bulk loss tangent would limit device quality factors to less than 20 million, suggesting that bulk loss is likely the dominant loss mechanism in the longest-lived transmons on sapphire. We also demonstrate this method on HEMEX sapphire and bound its bulk loss tangent to be less than 15(5)×10−9. As this bound is about four times smaller than the bulk loss tangent of EFG sapphire, use of HEMEX sapphire as a substrate would lift the bulk dielectric coherence limit of a typical transmon qubit to several milliseconds.
28
Jun
2022
Compact vacuum gap transmon qubits: Selective and sensitive probes for superconductor surface losses
State-of-the-art transmon qubits rely on large capacitors which systematically improves their coherence due to reduced surface loss participation. However, this approach increases both
the footprint and the parasitic cross-coupling and is ultimately limited by radiation losses – a potential roadblock for scaling up quantum processors to millions of qubits. In this work we present transmon qubits with sizes as low as 36×39μm2 with ≳100\,nm wide vacuum gap capacitors that are micro-machined from commercial silicon-on-insulator wafers and shadow evaporated with aluminum. After the release in HF vapor we achieve a vacuum participation ratio up to 99.6\% in an in-plane design that is compatible with standard coplanar circuits. Qubit relaxation time measurements for small gaps with high vacuum electric fields of up to 22\,V/m reveal a double exponential decay indicating comparably strong coupling to long-lived two-level-systems (TLS). %We also show that the fast ‚initial‘ and slow ‚residual‘ decay strongly correlates with the measured sub-single-photon and high-drive-power quality factors of lumped element vacuum gap resonators, respectively. The exceptionally high selectivity of >20\,dB to the superconductor-vacuum surface allows to precisely back out the sub-single-photon dielectric loss tangent of aluminum oxide exposed to ambient conditions of tanδ=1.5×10−4 for a thickness of 3\,nm. %assuming 3\,nm thick. %the widely used aluminum oxide exposed to ambient conditions. In terms of future scaling potential we achieve a qubit quality factor by footprint area of 20μs−2, which is on par with the highest T1 devices relying on larger geometries and expected to improve substantially for lower loss superconductors like NbTiN, TiN or Ta.
27
Jun
2022
Observation of critical phase transition in a generalized Aubry-André-Harper model on a superconducting quantum processor with tunable couplers
Quantum simulation enables study of many-body systems in non-equilibrium by mapping to a controllable quantum system, providing a new tool for computational intractable problems. Here,
using a programmable quantum processor with a chain of 10 superconducting qubits interacted through tunable couplers, we simulate the one-dimensional generalized Aubry-André-Harper model for three different phases, i.e., extended, localized and critical phases. The properties of phase transitions and many-body dynamics are studied in the presence of quasi-periodic modulations for both off-diagonal hopping coefficients and on-site potentials of the model controlled respectively by adjusting strength of couplings and qubit frequencies. We observe the spin transport for initial single- and multi-excitation states in different phases, and characterize phase transitions by experimentally measuring dynamics of participation entropies. Our experimental results demonstrate that the newly developed tunable coupling architecture of superconducting processor extends greatly the simulation realms for a wide variety of Hamiltonians, and may trigger further investigations on various quantum and topological phenomena.
26
Jun
2022
A scalable superconducting quantum simulator with long-range connectivity based on a photonic bandgap metamaterial
Synthesis of many-body quantum systems in the laboratory can provide further insight into the emergent behavior of quantum materials. While the majority of engineerable many-body systems,
or quantum simulators, consist of particles on a lattice with local interactions, quantum systems featuring long-range interactions are particularly difficult to model and interesting to study due to the rapid spatio-temporal growth of entanglement in such systems. Here we present a scalable quantum simulator architecture based on superconducting transmon qubits on a lattice, with interactions mediated by the exchange of photons via a metamaterial waveguide quantum bus. The metamaterial waveguide enables extensible scaling of the system and multiplexed qubit read-out, while simultaneously protecting the qubits from radiative decay. As an initial demonstration of this platform, we realize a 10-qubit simulator of the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model, with in situ tunability of both the hopping range and the on-site interaction. We characterize the Hamiltonian of the system using a measurement-efficient protocol based on quantum many-body chaos, uncovering the remnant phase of Bloch waves of the metamaterial bus in the long-range hopping terms. We further study the many-body quench dynamics of the system, revealing through global bit-string statistics the predicted crossover from integrability to ergodicity as the hopping range is extended beyond nearest-neighbor. Looking forward, the metamaterial quantum bus may be extended to a two-dimensional lattice of qubits, and used to generate other spin-like lattice interactions or tailored lattice connectivity, expanding the accessible Hamiltonians for analog quantum simulation using superconducting quantum circuits.
24
Jun
2022
Controlled-controlled-phase gates for superconducting qubits mediated by a shared tunable coupler
Applications for noisy intermediate-scale quantum computing devices rely on the efficient entanglement of many qubits to reach a potential quantum advantage. Although entanglement is
typically generated using two-qubit gates, direct control of strong multi-qubit interactions can improve the efficiency of the process. Here, we investigate a system of three superconducting transmon-type qubits coupled via a single flux-tunable coupler. Tuning the frequency of the coupler by adiabatic flux pulses enables us to control the conditional energy shifts between the qubits and directly realize multi-qubit interactions. To accurately adjust the resulting controlled relative phases, we describe a gate protocol involving refocusing pulses and adjustable interaction times. This enables the implementation of the full family of pairwise controlled-phase (CPHASE) and controlled-controlled-phase (CCPHASE) gates. Numerical simulations result in fidelities around 99 % and gate times below 300 ns using currently achievable system parameters and decoherence rates.
23
Jun
2022
Topologically protected π-ring qubits
The π-ring qubit array is described using quasiclassical approaches that are shown to be accurate and give clarity to the complex energy landscape of connected vortex qubits. Using
the techniques, large arrays of Josephson junction systems can be designed, including phase shift devices. Herein, connected arrays of loops containing π junctions are described. These techniques are useful for design of quantum computers based on superconducting technologies, hybrid quantum technologies and quantum networks.