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
29
Jul
2019
Error-corrected gates on an encoded qubit
To solve classically hard problems, quantum computers need to be resilient to the influence of noise and decoherence. In such a fault-tolerant quantum computer, noise-induced errors
must be detected and corrected in real-time to prevent them from propagating between components. This requirement is especially pertinent while applying quantum gates, when the interaction between components can cause errors to quickly spread throughout the system. However, the large overhead involved in most fault-tolerant architectures makes implementing these systems a daunting task, which motivates the search for hardware-efficient alternatives. Here, we present a gate enacted by a multilevel ancilla transmon on a cavity-encoded logical qubit that is fault-tolerant with respect to decoherence in both the ancilla and the encoded qubit. We maintain the purity of the encoded qubit in the presence of ancilla errors by detecting those errors in real-time, and applying the appropriate corrections. We show a reduction of the logical gate error by a factor of two in the presence of naturally occurring decoherence, and demonstrate resilience against ancilla bit-flips and phase-flips by observing a sixfold suppression of the gate error with increased energy relaxation, and a fourfold suppression with increased dephasing noise. The results demonstrate that bosonic logical qubits can be controlled by error-prone ancilla qubits without inheriting the ancilla’s inferior performance. As such, error-corrected ancilla-enabled gates are an important step towards fully fault-tolerant processing of bosonic qubits.
28
Jul
2019
The Kerr-Cat Qubit: Stabilization, Readout, and Gates
Quantum superpositions of macroscopically distinct classical states, so-called Schrödinger cat states, are a resource for quantum metrology, quantum communication, and quantum computation.
In particular, the superpositions of two opposite-phase coherent states in an oscillator encode a qubit protected against phase-flip errors. However, several challenges have to be overcome in order for this concept to become a practical way to encode and manipulate error-protected quantum information. The protection must be maintained by stabilizing these highly excited states and, at the same time, the system has to be compatible with fast gates on the encoded qubit and a quantum non-demolition readout of the encoded information. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a novel method for the generation and stabilization of Schrödinger cat states based on the interplay between Kerr nonlinearity and single-mode squeezing in a superconducting microwave resonator. We show an increase in transverse relaxation time of the stabilized, error-protected qubit over the single-photon Fock-state encoding by more than one order of magnitude. We perform all single-qubit gate operations on time-scales more than sixty times faster than the shortest coherence time and demonstrate single-shot readout of the protected qubit under stabilization. Our results showcase the combination of fast quantum control with the robustness against errors intrinsic to stabilized macroscopic states and open up the possibility of using these states as resources in quantum information processing.
26
Jul
2019
Exponential suppression of bit-flips in a qubit encoded in an oscillator
A quantum system interacts with its environment, if ever so slightly, no matter how much care is put into isolating it. As a consequence, quantum bits (qubits) undergo errors, putting
dauntingly difficult constraints on the hardware suitable for quantum computation. New strategies are emerging to circumvent this problem by encoding a qubit non-locally across the phase space of a physical system. Since most sources of decoherence are due to local fluctuations, the foundational promise is to exponentially suppress errors by increasing a measure of this non-locality. Prominent examples are topological qubits which delocalize quantum information over real space and where spatial extent measures non-locality. In this work, we encode a qubit in the field quadrature space of a superconducting resonator endowed with a special mechanism that dissipates photons in pairs. This process pins down two computational states to separate locations in phase space. As we increase this separation, we measure an exponential decrease of the bit-flip rate while only linearly increasing the phase-flip rate. Since bit-flips are continuously and autonomously corrected at the single qubit level, only phase-flips are left to be corrected via a one-dimensional quantum error correction code. This exponential scaling demonstrates that resonators with non-linear dissipation are promising building blocks for universal fault-tolerant quantum computation with drastically reduced hardware overhead.
23
Jul
2019
Fabrication and characterization of aluminum SQUID transmission lines
We report on the fabrication and characterization of 50 Ohms, flux-tunable, low-loss, SQUID-based transmission lines. The fabrication process relies on the deposition of a thin dielectric
layer (few tens of nanometers) via Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) on top of a SQUID array, the whole structure is then covered by a non-superconducting metallic top ground plane. We present experimental results from five different samples. We systematically characterize their microscopic parameters by measuring the propagating phase in these structures. We also investigate losses and discriminate conductor from dielectric losses. This fabrication method offers several advantages. First, the SQUID array fabrication does not rely on a Niobium tri-layer process but on a simpler double angle evaporation technique. Second, ALD provides high quality dielectric leading to low-loss devices. Further, the SQUID array fabrication is based on a standard, all-aluminum process, allowing direct integration with superconducting qubits. Moreover, our devices are in-situ flux tunable, allowing mitigation of incertitude inherent to any fabrication process. Finally, the unit cell being a single SQUID (no extra ground capacitance is needed), it is straightforward to modulate the size of the unit cell periodically, allowing band-engineering. This fabrication process can be directly applied to traveling wave parametric amplifiers.
A photonic crystal Josephson traveling wave parametric amplifier
An amplifier combining noise performances as close as possible to the quantum limit with large bandwidth and high saturation power is highly desirable for many solid state quantum technologies
such as high fidelity qubit readout or high sensitivity electron spin resonance for example. Here we introduce a new Traveling Wave Parametric Amplifier based on Superconducting QUantum Interference Devices. It displays a 3 GHz bandwidth, a -102 dBm 1-dB compression point and added noise near the quantum limit. Compared to previous state-of-the-art, it is an order of magnitude more compact, its characteristic impedance is in-situ tunable and its fabrication process requires only two lithography steps. The key is the engineering of a gap in the dispersion relation of the transmission line. This is obtained using a periodic modulation of the SQUID size, similarly to what is done with photonic crystals. Moreover, we provide a new theoretical treatment to describe the non-trivial interplay between non-linearity and such periodicity. Our approach provides a path to co-integration with other quantum devices such as qubits given the low footprint and easy fabrication of our amplifier.
19
Jul
2019
Observation of Three-Photon Spontaneous Parametric Downconversion in a Superconducting Parametric Cavity
Spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) has been a key enabling technology in exploring quantum phenomena and their applications for decades. For instance, traditional SPDC, which
splits a high energy pump photon into two lower energy photons, is a common way to produce entangled photon pairs. Since the early realizations of SPDC, researchers have thought to generalize it to higher order, e.g., to produce entangled photon triplets. However, directly generating photon triplets through a single SPDC process has remained elusive. Here, using a flux-pumped superconducting parametric cavity, we demonstrate direct three-photon SPDC, with photon triplets generated in a single cavity mode or split between multiple modes. With strong pumping, the states can be quite bright, with flux densities exceeding 60 photon/s/Hz. The observed states are strongly non-Gaussian, which has important implications for potential applications. In the single-mode case, we observe a triangular star-shaped distribution of quadrature voltages, indicative of the long-predicted „star state“. The observed star state shows strong third-order correlations, as expected for a state generated by a cubic Hamiltonian. By pumping at the sum frequency of multiple modes, we observe strong three-body correlations between multiple modes, strikingly, in the absence of second-order correlations. We further analyze the third-order correlations under mode transformations by the symplectic symmetry group, showing that the observed transformation properties serve to „fingerprint“ the specific cubic Hamiltonian that generates them. The observed non-Gaussian, third-order correlations represent an important step forward in quantum optics and may have a strong impact on quantum communication with microwave fields as well as continuous-variable quantum computation.
17
Jul
2019
A superfluid-tunable 3D transmon qubit
Superfluid helium at milli-Kelvin temperatures is a dielectric liquid with an extremely low loss tangent at microwave frequencies. As such, it is a promising candidate for incorporation
into hybrid quantum systems containing superconducting qubits. We demonstrate the viability of this hybrid systems approach by controllably immersing a three-dimensional superconducting transmon qubit in superfluid 4He. By measuring spectroscopic and coherence properties we find that the cavity, the qubit, and their coupling are all modified by the presence of the dielectric superfluid, which we analyze within the framework of circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED). At temperatures relevant to quantum computing experiments, the energy relaxation time of the qubit is not significantly changed by the presence of the superfluid, while the pure dephasing time modestly increases, which we attribute to improved thermalization via the superfluid.
14
Jul
2019
Superconducting qubits beyond the dispersive regime
Superconducting circuits consisting of a few low-anharmonic transmons coupled to readout and bus resonators can perform basic quantum computations. Since the number of qubits in such
circuits is limited to not more than a few tens, the qubits can be designed to operate within the dispersive regime, where frequency detuning are much stronger than coupling strengths. However, scaling up the number of qubits will bring the circuit out of this regime and invalidates current theories. We develop a formalism that allows to consistently diagonalize superconducting circuit hamiltonian beyond dispersive regime. This will allow to study qubit-qubit interaction unperturbatively, therefore our formalism remains valid and accurate at small or even negligible frequency detuning; thus our formalism serves as a theoretical ground for designing qubit characteristics for scaling up the number of qubits in superconducting circuits. We study the most important circuits with single- and two-qubit gates, i.e. a single transmon coupled to a resonator and two transmons sharing a bus resonator. Surprisingly our formalism allows to determine the circuit characteristics, such as dressed frequencies and Kerr couplings, in closed-form formulas that not only reproduce perturbative results but also extrapolate beyond the dispersive regime and can ultimately reproduce (and even modify) the Jaynes-Cumming results at resonant frequencies.
10
Jul
2019
Efficient quasiparticle traps with low dissipation through gap engineering
Quasiparticles represent an intrinsic source of perturbation for superconducting qubits, leading to both dissipation of the qubit energy and dephasing. Recently, it has been shown that
normal-metal traps may efficiently reduce the quasiparticle population and improve the qubit lifetime, provided the trap surpasses a certain characteristic size. Moreover, while the trap itself introduces new relaxation mechanisms, they are not expected to harm state-of-the-art transmon qubits under the condition that the traps are not placed too close to extremal positions where electric fields are high. Here, we study a different type of trap, realized through gap engineering. We find that gap-engineered traps relax the remaining constraints imposed on normal metal traps. Firstly, the characteristic trap size, above which the trap is efficient, is reduced with respect to normal metal traps, such that here, strong traps are possible in smaller devices. Secondly, the losses caused by the trap are now greatly reduced, providing more flexibility in trap placement. The latter point is of particular importance, since for efficient protection from quasiparticles, the traps ideally should be placed close to the active parts of the qubit device, where electric fields are typically high.
Time-domain characterization and correction of on-chip distortion of control pulses in a quantum processor
We introduce Cryoscope, a method for sampling on-chip baseband pulses used to dynamically control qubit frequency in a quantum processor. We specifically use Cryoscope to measure the
step response of the dedicated flux control lines of two-junction transmon qubits in circuit QED processors with the temporal resolution of the room-temperature arbitrary waveform generator producing the control pulses. As a first application, we iteratively improve this step response using optimized real-time digital filters to counter the linear-dynamical distortion in the control line, as needed for high-fidelity, repeatable one- and two-qubit gates based on dynamical control of qubit frequency.