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
21
Feb
2018
Microwave device characterisation using a widefield diamond microscope
Devices relying on microwave circuitry form a cornerstone of many classical and emerging quantum technologies. A capability to provide in-situ, noninvasive and direct imaging of the
microwave fields above such devices would be a powerful tool for their function and failure analysis. In this work, we build on recent achievements in magnetometry using ensembles of nitrogen vacancy centres in diamond, to present a widefield microwave microscope with few-micron resolution over a millimeter-scale field of view, 130nT/sqrt-Hz microwave amplitude sensitivity, a dynamic range of 48 dB, and sub-ms temporal resolution. We use our microscope to image the microwave field a few microns above a range of microwave circuitry components, and to characterise a novel atom chip design. Our results open the way to high-throughput characterisation and debugging of complex, multi-component microwave devices, including real-time exploration of device operation.
18
Feb
2018
Theory of nonlinear microwave absorption by interacting two-level systems
The microwave absorption and noise caused by quantum two-level systems (TLS) dramatically suppress the coherence in Josephson junction qubits that are promising candidates for a quantum
information applications. Microwave absorption by TLSs is not clearly understood yet because of the complexity of their interactions leading to the spectral diffusion. Here, the theory of the non-linear absorption in the presence of spectral diffusion is developed using the generalized master equation formalism. The theory predicts that the linear absorption regime holds while a TLS Rabi frequency is smaller than their phase decoherence rate. At higher external fields, a novel non-linear absorption regime is found with the loss tangent inversely proportional to the intensity of the field. The theory can be generalized to acoustic absorption and lower dimensions realized in superconducting qubits.
12
Feb
2018
Superconducting qutrit-qubit circuit: A toolbox for efficient quantum gates
As classical computers struggle to keep up with Moore’s law, quantum computing may represent a big step in technology and yield significant improvement over classical computing
for many important tasks. Building a quantum computer, however, is a daunting challenge since it requires good control but also good isolation from the environment to minimize decoherence. It is therefore important to realize quantum gates efficiently, using as few operations as possible, to reduce the amount of required control and operation time and thus improve the quantum state coherence. Here we propose a superconducting circuit for implementing a tunable spin chain consisting of a qutrit (three-level system analogous to spin-1) coupled to two qubits (spin-1/2). Our system can efficiently accomplish various quantum information tasks, including generation of entanglement of the two qubits and conditional three-qubit quantum gates, such as the Toffoli and Fredkin gates, which are universal for reversible classical computations. Furthermore, our system realizes a conditional geometric gate which may be used for holonomic (non-adiabatic) quantum computing. The efficiency, robustness and universality of our circuit makes it a promising candidate to serve as a building block for larger spin networks capable of performing involved quantum computational tasks.
Quantum spin transistors in superconducting circuits
Transistors play a vital role in classical computers, and their quantum mechanical counterparts could potentially be as important in quantum computers. Where a classical transistor
is operated as a switch that either blocks or allows an electric current, the quantum transistor should operate on quantum information. In terms of a spin model the in-going quantum information is an arbitrary qubit state (spin-1/2 state). In this paper, we derive a model of four qubits with Heisenberg interactions that works as a quantum spin transistor, i.e. a system with perfect state transfer or perfect blockade depending on the state of two gate qubits. We propose a realistic implementation of the model using state-of-the-art superconducting circuits. Finally, we demonstrate that our proposal operates with high-fidelity under realistic decoherence, and without fine-tuning of any of the parameters.
09
Feb
2018
Microwave-Activated Controlled-Z Gate for Fixed-Frequency Fluxonium Qubits
The superconducting fluxonium circuit is an artificial atom with a strongly anharmonic spectrum: when biased at a half flux quantum, the lowest qubit transition is an order of magnitude
smaller in frequency than those to higher levels. Similar to conventional atomic systems, such a frequency separation between the computational and noncomputational subspaces allows independent optimizations of the qubit coherence and two-qubit interactions. Here we describe a controlled-Z gate for two fluxoniums connected either capacitively or inductively, with qubit transitions fixed near 500 MHz. The gate is activated by a microwave drive at a resonance involving the second excited state. We estimate intrinsic gate fidelities over 99.9% with gate times below 100 ns.
Electron Spin Coherences in Rare-Earth Optically Excited States for Microwave to Optical Quantum Transducers
Efficient and reversible optical to microwave coherent transducers are required to enable entanglement transfer between superconducting qubits and light for quantum networks. Rare-earth-doped
crystals that possess narrow optical and spin transitions are a promising way to implement these devices. Current approaches use ground-state electron spin transitions that have coherence lifetimes (T2) often limited by spin flip-flop processes and/or spectral diffusion, even at very low temperatures. Here, we investigate spin coherence in an optically excited state of an Er3+:Y2SiO5 crystal at temperatures from 1.6 to 3.5 K and under a weak 8.7 mT magnetic field. Spin coherence and population lifetimes of up to 1.6 μs and 1.2 ms, respectively, are measured by 2- and 3-pulse optically-detected spin echo experiments. Analysis of the dephasing processes suggest that ms T2 can be reached at lower temperatures for the excited-state spins, whereas ground-state spin states could be limited to a few μs due to resonant interactions with the other Er3+ spins in the lattice (spin diffusion). We propose a quantum transducer scheme with the potential for close to unit efficiency that exploits the specific advantages offered by the spin states of optically excited electronic energy levels.
06
Feb
2018
Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics of Granular Aluminum Resonators
The introduction of crystalline defects or dopants can give rise to so-called „dirty superconductors“, characterized by reduced coherence length and quasiparticle mean free
path. In particular, granular superconductors such as Granular Aluminum (GrAl), consisting of remarkably uniform grains connected by Josephson contacts have attracted interest since the sixties thanks to their rich phase diagram and practical advantages, like increased critical temperature, critical field, and kinetic inductance. Here we report the measurement and modeling of circuit quantum electrodynamics properties of GrAl microwave resonators in a wide frequency range, up to the spectral superconducting gap. Interestingly, we observe self-Kerr coefficients ranging from 10−2 Hz to 105 Hz, within an order of magnitude from analytic calculations based on GrAl microstructure. This amenable nonlinearity, combined with the relatively high quality factors in the 105 range, open new avenues for applications in quantum information processing and kinetic inductance detectors.
Quasiparticle dynamics in granular aluminum close to the superconductor to insulator transition
Superconducting high kinetic inductance elements constitute a valuable resource for quantum circuit design and millimeter-wave detection. Granular aluminum (GrAl) in the superconducting
regime is a particularly interesting material since it has already shown a kinetic inductance in the range of nH/◻ and its deposition is compatible with conventional Al/AlOx/Al Josephson junction fabrication. We characterize microwave resonators fabricated from GrAl with a room temperature resistivity of 4×103μΩ⋅cm, which is a factor of 3 below the superconductor to insulator transition, showing a kinetic inductance fraction close to unity. The measured internal quality factors are on the order of Qi=105 in the single photon regime, and we demonstrate that non-equilibrium quasiparticles (QP) constitute the dominant loss mechanism. We extract QP relaxation times in the range of 1 s and we observe QP bursts every ∼20 s. The current level of coherence of GrAl resonators makes them attractive for integration in quantum devices, while it also evidences the need to reduce the density of non-equilibrium QPs.
05
Feb
2018
Superconducting metamaterials for waveguide quantum electrodynamics
The embedding of tunable quantum emitters in a photonic bandgap structure enables the control of dissipative and dispersive interactions between emitters and their photonic bath. Operation
in the transmission band, outside the gap, allows for studying waveguide quantum electrodynamics in the slow-light regime. Alternatively, tuning the emitter into the bandgap results in finite range emitter-emitter interactions via bound photonic states. Here we couple a transmon qubit to a superconducting metamaterial with a deep sub-wavelength lattice constant (λ/60). The metamaterial is formed by periodically loading a transmission line with compact, low loss, low disorder lumped element microwave resonators. We probe the coherent and dissipative dynamics of the system by measuring the Lamb shift and the change in the lifetime of the transmon qubit. Tuning the qubit frequency in the vicinity of a band-edge with a group index of ng=450, we observe an anomalous Lamb shift of 10 MHz accompanied by a 24-fold enhancement in the qubit lifetime. In addition, we demonstrate selective enhancement and inhibition of spontaneous emission of different transmon transitions, which provide simultaneous access to long-lived metastable qubit states and states strongly coupled to propagating waveguide modes.
Voltage-Controlled Superconducting Quantum Bus
We demonstrate the ability of an epitaxial semiconductor-superconductor nanowire to serve as a field-effect switch to tune a superconducting cavity. Two superconducting gatemon qubits
are coupled to the cavity, which acts as a quantum bus. Using a gate voltage to control the superconducting switch yields up to a factor of 8 change in qubit-qubit coupling between the on and off states without detrimental effect on qubit coherence. High-bandwidth operation of the coupling switch on nanosecond timescales degrades qubit coherence.