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
06
Aug
2020
Electron shelving of a superconducting artificial atom
Interfacing stationary qubits with propagating photons is a fundamental problem in quantum technology. Cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED) invokes a mediator degree of freedom in
the form of a far-detuned cavity mode, the adaptation of which to superconducting circuits (cQED) proved remarkably fruitful. The cavity both blocks the qubit emission and it enables a dispersive readout of the qubit state. Yet, a more direct (cavityless) interface is possible with atomic clocks, in which an orbital cycling transition can scatter photons depending on the state of a hyperfine or quadrupole qubit transition. Originally termed „electron shelving“, such a conditional fluorescence phenomenon is the cornerstone of many quantum information platforms, including trapped ions, solid state defects, and semiconductor quantum dots. Here we apply the shelving idea to circuit atoms and demonstrate a conditional fluorescence readout of fluxonium qubit placed inside a matched one-dimensional waveguide. Cycling the non-computational transition between ground and third excited states produces a microwave photon every 91 ns conditioned on the qubit ground state, while the qubit coherence time exceeds 50 us. The readout has a built-in quantum non-demolition property, allowing over 100 fluorescence cycles in agreement with a four-level optical pumping model. Our result introduces a resource-efficient alternative to cQED. It also adds a state-of-the-art quantum memory to the growing toolbox of waveguide QED.
High-Fidelity Control of Superconducting Qubits Using Direct Microwave Synthesis in Higher Nyquist Zones
Control electronics for superconducting quantum processors have strict requirements for accurate command of the sensitive quantum states of their qubits. Hinging on the purity of ultra-phase-stable
oscillators to upconvert very-low-noise baseband pulses, conventional control systems can become prohibitively complex and expensive when scaling to larger quantum devices, especially as high sampling rates become desirable for fine-grained pulse shaping. Few-GHz radio-frequency digital-to-analog converters (RF DACs) present a more economical avenue for high-fidelity control while simultaneously providing greater command over the spectrum of the synthesized signal. Modern RF DACs with extra-wide bandwidths are able to directly synthesize tones above their sampling rates, thereby keeping the system clock rate at a level compatible with modern digital logic systems while still being able to generate high-frequency pulses with arbitrary profiles. We have incorporated custom superconducting qubit control logic into off-the-shelf hardware capable of low-noise pulse synthesis up to 7.5 GHz using an RF DAC clocked at 5 GHz. Our approach enables highly linear and stable microwave synthesis over a wide bandwidth, giving rise to resource-efficient control and the potential for reducing the required number of cables entering the cryogenic environment. We characterize the performance of the hardware using a five-transmon superconducting device and demonstrate consistently reduced two-qubit gate error (as low as 1.8%) accompanied by superior control chain linearity compared to traditional configurations. The exceptional flexibility and stability further establish a foundation for scalable quantum control beyond intermediate-scale devices.
Granular superconductors for high kinetic inductance and low loss quantum devices
Granular aluminum is a promising material for high kinetic inductance devices such as qubit circuits. It has the advantage over atomically disordered materials such as NbN_x, to maintain
a high kinetic inductance concomitantly with a high quality factor. We show that high quality nano-scale granular aluminum films having a sharp superconducting transition with normal state resistivity values of the order of 1×10^5 \mu\Omega cm and kinetic inductance values of the order of 10 nH/sq can be obtained, surpassing state of the art values. We argue that this is a result of the different nature of the metal-to-insulator transition, being electronic correlations driven (Mott type) in the former and disorder driven (Anderson type) in the latter.
05
Aug
2020
High-Fidelity Measurement of a Superconducting Qubit using an On-Chip Microwave Photon Counter
We describe an approach to the high-fidelity measurement of a superconducting qubit using an on-chip microwave photon counter. The protocol relies on the transient response of a dispersively
coupled measurement resonator to map the state of the qubit to „bright“ and „dark“ cavity pointer states that are characterized by a large differential photon occupation. Following this mapping, we photodetect the resonator using the Josephson Photomultipler (JPM), which transitions between classically distinguishable flux states when cavity photon occupation exceeds a certain threshold. Our technique provides access to the binary outcome of projective quantum measurement at the millikelvin stage without the need for quantum-limited preamplification and thresholding at room temperature. We achieve raw single-shot measurement fidelity in excess of 98% across multiple samples using this approach in total measurement times under 500 ns. In addition, we show that the backaction and crosstalk associated with our measurement protocol can be mitigated by exploiting the intrinsic damping of the JPM itself.
04
Aug
2020
Microwave Quantum Link between Superconducting Circuits Housed in Spatially Separated Cryogenic Systems
Superconducting circuits are a strong contender for realizing quantum computing systems, and are also successfully used to study quantum optics and hybrid quantum systems. However,
their cryogenic operation temperatures and the current lack of coherence-preserving microwave-to-optical conversion solutions have hindered the realization of superconducting quantum networks either spanning different cryogenics systems or larger distances. Here, we report the successful operation of a cryogenic waveguide coherently linking transmon qubits located in two dilution refrigerators separated by a physical distance of five meters. We transfer qubit states and generate entanglement on-demand with average transfer and target state fidelities of 85.8 % and 79.5 %, respectively, between the two nodes of this elementary network. Cryogenic microwave links do provide an opportunity to scale up systems for quantum computing and create local area quantum communication networks over length scales of at least tens of meters.
03
Aug
2020
Characterization of multi-level dynamics and decoherence in a high-anharmonicity capacitively shunted flux circuit
We present the design and characterization of a three-Josephson-junction superconducting loop circuit with three large shunt capacitors. The circuit used as a qubit shows long energy
relaxation times, of the order of 40 μs, and a spin-echo dephasing time of 9.4 μs. The circuit has high anharmonicity, of 2π×3.69 GHz. We extract the multi-level relaxation and dephasing rates of the circuit used as a qutrit and discuss the possible sources for the decoherence. The high anharmonicity allows for fast qubit control with 99.92% average gate fidelity, characterized by randomized benchmarking. These results demonstrate interesting potential use for fast nanosecond time scale two-qubit gates and multi-level quantum logic
30
Jul
2020
Noise reduction in qubit readout with a two-mode squeezed interferometer
Fault-tolerant quantum information processing with flawed qubits and gates requires highly efficient, quantum non-demolition (QND) qubit readout. In superconducting circuits, qubit
readout using coherent light with fidelity above 99% has been achieved by using quantum-limited parametric amplifiers such as the Josephson Parametric Converter (JPC). However, further improvement of such measurement is fundamentally limited by the vacuum fluctuations of the coherent light used for readout. In this work we measure a transmon qubit/cavity system with an unbalanced two-mode squeezed light interferometer formed from two JPCs. The first amplifier generates two-mode squeezed vacuum at its output, which is coherently recombined by the second amplifier after one branch is shifted and displaced by the transmon’s state after it interacts with the qubit/cavity system on one arm of the interferometer. We have observed a 44% improvement in power Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of projective readout compared to that of coherent light readout in the same system. To investigate the quantum properties of the two-mode squeezed light in the system, we also studied weak measurement and found, surprisingly, that tuning the interferometer to be as unprojective as possible was associated with an increase in the quantum efficiency of our readout relative to the optimum setting for projective measurement. These enhancements may enable remote entanglement with lower efficiency components in a system with qubits in both arms of the interferometer.
27
Jul
2020
Floquet-engineered enhancement of coherence times in a driven fluxonium qubit
vWe use the quasienergy structure that emerges when a fluxonium superconducting circuit is driven periodically to encode quantum information with dynamically induced flux-insensitive
sweet spots. The framework of Floquet theory provides an intuitive description of these high-coherence working points located away from the half-flux symmetry point of the undriven qubit. This approach offers flexibility in choosing the flux bias point and the energy of the logical qubit states as shown in [\textit{Huang et al., 2020}]. We characterize the response of the system to noise in the modulation amplitude and DC flux bias, and experimentally demonstrate an optimal working point which is simultaneously insensitive against fluctuations in both. We observe a 40-fold enhancement of the qubit coherence times measured with Ramsey-type interferometry at the dynamical sweet spot compared with static operation at the same bias point.
21
Jul
2020
Coupling a Superconducting Qubit to a Left-Handed Metamaterial Resonator
Metamaterial resonant structures made from arrays of superconducting lumped circuit elements can exhibit microwave mode spectra with left-handed dispersion, resulting in a high density
of modes in the same frequency range where superconducting qubits are typically operated, as well as a bandgap at lower frequencies that extends down to dc. Using this novel regime for multi-mode circuit quantum electrodynamics, we have performed a series of measurements of such a superconducting metamaterial resonator coupled to a flux-tunable transmon qubit. Through microwave measurements of the metamaterial, we have observed the coupling of the qubit to each of the modes that it passes through. Using a separate readout resonator, we have probed the qubit dispersively and characterized the qubit energy relaxation as a function of frequency, which is strongly affected by the Purcell effect in the presence of the dense mode spectrum. Additionally, we have investigated the ac Stark shift of the qubit as the photon number in the various metamaterial modes is varied. The ability to tailor the dense mode spectrum through the choice of circuit parameters and manipulate the photonic state of the metamaterial through interactions with qubits makes this a promising platform for analog quantum simulation and quantum memories.
The Rayleigh-Lorentz Invariant and Optimal Adiabatic Qubit-Information Detection for Superconducting Qubit Resonators
Dynamical properties of a resonator can be analyzed using the Rayleigh-Lorentz invariant which is not an exact constant but varies more or less over time. We investigate the time behavior
of this invariant for a flux qubit resonator in order for better understanding of qubit-information detection with the resonator. Flux qubit resonators can be utilized in implementing diverse next generation nano-optic and nano-electronic devices such as quantum computing systems. Through the analyses of the temporal evolution of the invariant, we derive a condition for optimal adiabatic qubit-information detection with the resonator. This condition is helpful for controlling the dynamics of qubit resonators over long periods of time. It is necessary to consider it when designing a nano-resonator used for quantum nondemolition readouts of qubit states, crucial in quantum computation.