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
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.
Laser-annealing Josephson junctions for yielding scaled-up superconducting quantum processors
As superconducting quantum circuits scale to larger sizes, the problem of frequency crowding proves a formidable task. Here we present a solution for this problem in fixed-frequency
qubit architectures. By systematically adjusting qubit frequencies post-fabrication, we show a nearly ten-fold improvement in the precision of setting qubit frequencies. To assess scalability, we identify the types of ‚frequency collisions‘ that will impair a transmon qubit and cross-resonance gate architecture. Using statistical modeling, we compute the probability of evading all such conditions, as a function of qubit frequency precision. We find that without post-fabrication tuning, the probability of finding a workable lattice quickly approaches 0. However with the demonstrated precisions it is possible to find collision-free lattices with favorable yield. These techniques and models are currently employed in available quantum systems and will be indispensable as systems continue to scale to larger sizes.
A quantum model for rf-SQUIDs based metamaterials enabling 3WM and 4WM Travelling Wave Parametric Amplification
A quantum model for Josephson-based metamaterials working in the Three-Wave Mixing (3WM) and Four-Wave Mixing (4WM) regimes at the single photon level is presented. The transmission
line taken into account, namely Traveling Wave Josephson Parametric Amplifier (TWJPA), is a bipole composed by a chain of rf-SQUIDs which can be biased by a DC current or a magnetic field in order to activate the 3WM or 4WM nonlinearities. The model exploits a Hamiltonian approach to analytically work out the time evolution both in the Heisenberg and interaction pictures. The former returns the analytic form of the gain of the amplifier, while the latter allows to recover the probability distributions vs. time of the photonic populations, for multimodal Fock and coherent input states. The dependence of the metamaterial’s nonlinearities is presented in terms of circuit parameters in a lumped model framework while evaluating the experimental conditions effects on the model validity.
01
Sep
2020
Entanglement dynamics of a dc SQUID interacting with a single mode radiation field
In this work, we study the entanglement dynamics in the coupling between a superconducting device as a dc SQUID and a single-mode radiation field for the information transference process.
We show that a pair of photons can be generated through the entanglement dynamics which emerge from the atomic population transfer. In this regard, we also demonstrate the transfer of entanglement and quantum coherence from the superconducting device to the radiation field modes, where entanglement is transferred as the quantum coherence is transmitted, since both stem from the quantum superposition principle, encapsulating the quantumness of the system.