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
18
Aug
2016
Quantum routing of single optical photons with a superconducting flux qubit
Controlling and swapping quantum information in a quantum coherent way between the microwave and optical regimes is essential for building long-range superconducting quantum networks
but extremely challenging. We propose a hybrid quantum interface between the microwave and optical domains where the propagation of a single-photon pulse along a nanowaveguide is controlled in a coherent way by tuning electromagnetically induced transparency window with the quantum state of a flux qubit. The qubit can route a single-photon pulse with a single spin in nanodiamond into a quantum superposition of paths without the aid of an optical cavity – simplifying the setup. By preparing the flux qubit in a superposition state our cavity-less scheme creates a hybrid state-path entanglement between a flying single optical photon and a static superconducting qubit, and can conduct heralded quantum state transfer via measurement.
17
Aug
2016
A two-fold quantum delayed-choice experiment in a superconducting circuit
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a two-fold quantum delayed-choice experiment where wave or particle nature of a superconducting interfering device can be post-selected twice
after the interferometer. The wave-particle complementarity is controlled by a quantum which-path detector (WPD) in a superposition of its on and off states implemented through a superconducting cavity. The WPD projected to its on state records which-path information, which manifests the particle nature and destroys the interference associated with wave nature of the system. In our experiment, we can recover the interference signal through a quantum eraser even if the WPD has selected out the particle nature in the first round of delayed-choice detection, showing that a quantum WPD adds further unprecedented controllability to test of wave-particle complementarity through the peculiar quantum delayed-choice measurements.
Emulating anyonic fractional statistical behavior in a superconducting quantum circuit
Anyons are exotic quasiparticles obeying fractional statistics,whose behavior can be emulated in artificially designed spin systems.Here we present an experimental emulation of creating
anyonic excitations in a superconducting circuit that consists of four qubits, achieved by dynamically generating the ground and excited states of the toric code model, i.e., four-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states. The anyonic braiding is implemented via single-qubit rotations: a phase shift of \pi related to braiding, the hallmark of Abelian 1/2 anyons, has been observed through a Ramsey-type interference measurement.
16
Aug
2016
A Superconducting Quantum Simulator for Topological Order and the Toric Code
Topological order is now being established as a central criterion for characterizing and classifying ground states of condensed matter systems and complements categorizations based
on symmetries. Fractional quantum Hall systems and quantum spin liquids are receiving substantial interest because of their intriguing quantum correlations, their exotic excitations and prospects for protecting stored quantum information against errors. Here we show that the Hamiltonian of the central model of this class of systems, the Toric Code, can be directly implemented as an analog quantum simulator in lattices of superconducting circuits. The four-body interactions, which lie at its heart, are in our concept realized via Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs) that are driven by a suitably oscillating flux bias. All physical qubits and coupling SQUIDs can be individually controlled with high precision. Topologically ordered states can be prepared via an adiabatic ramp of the stabilizer interactions. Strings of qubit operators, including the stabilizers and correlations along non-contractible loops, can be read out via a capacitive coupling to read-out resonators. Moreover, the available single qubit operations allow to create and propagate elementary excitations of the Toric Code and to verify their fractional statistics. The architecture we propose allows to implement a large variety of many-body interactions and thus provides a versatile analog quantum simulator for topological order and lattice gauge theories.
08
Aug
2016
Implementing a Universal Gate Set on a Logical Qubit Encoded in an Oscillator
A logical qubit is a two-dimensional subspace of a higher dimensional system, chosen such that it is possible to detect and correct the occurrence of certain errors. Manipulation of
the encoded information generally requires arbitrary and precise control over the entire system. Whether based on multiple physical qubits or larger dimensional modes such as oscillators, the individual elements in realistic devices will always have residual interactions which must be accounted for when designing logical operations. Here we demonstrate a holistic control strategy which exploits accurate knowledge of the Hamiltonian to manipulate a coupled oscillator-transmon system. We use this approach to realize high-fidelity (99%, inferred), decoherence-limited operations on a logical qubit encoded in a superconducting cavity resonator using four-component cat states. Our results show the power of applying numerical techniques to control linear oscillators and pave the way for utilizing their large Hilbert space as a resource in quantum information processing.
05
Aug
2016
Entropy-energy inequality for superconducting qutrit
We compare the entropy-energy inequality and the von Neumann entropic inequality for three level atom implemented on superconducting circuits with Josephson junction. The positivity
of entropy and energy relations for the qutrit system are used for verification of state tomography of qudit systems. The results obtained are valid for generic quantum states (qudits) and are illustrated on the example of the temperature density matrix of the single qutrit state.
31
Jul
2016
Characterizing Quantum Supremacy in Near-Term Devices
A critical question for the field of quantum computing in the near future is whether quantum devices without error correction can perform a well-defined computational task beyond the
capabilities of state-of-the-art classical computers, achieving so-called quantum supremacy. We study the task of sampling from the output distributions of (pseudo-)random quantum circuits, a natural task for benchmarking quantum computers. Crucially, sampling this distribution classically requires a direct numerical simulation of the circuit, with computational cost exponential in the number of qubits. This requirement is typical of chaotic systems. We extend previous results in computational complexity to argue more formally that this sampling task must take exponential time in a classical computer. We study the convergence to the chaotic regime using extensive supercomputer simulations, modeling circuits with up to 42 qubits – the largest quantum circuits simulated to date for a computational task that approaches quantum supremacy. We argue that while chaotic states are extremely sensitive to errors, quantum supremacy can be achieved in the near-term with approximately fifty superconducting qubits. We introduce cross entropy as a useful benchmark of quantum circuits which approximates the circuit fidelity. We show that the cross entropy can be efficiently measured when circuit simulations are available. Beyond the classically tractable regime, the cross entropy can be extrapolated and compared with theoretical estimates of circuit fidelity to define a practical quantum supremacy test.
29
Jul
2016
A Measurement Protocol for the Topological Uhlmann Phase
Topological insulators and superconductors at finite temperature can be characterised by the topological Uhlmann phase. However, the direct experimental measurement in condensed matter
systems has remained elusive. We explicitly demonstrate that the topological Uhlmann phase can be measured with the help of ancilla states in systems of entangled qubits that simulate a topological insulator. We propose a novel state-independent measurement protocol which does not involve prior knowledge of the system state. With this construction, otherwise unobservable phases carrying topological information about the system become accessible. This enables the measurement of a complete phase diagram including environmental effects. We explicitly consider a realization of our scheme using a circuit of superconducting qubits. This measurement scheme is extendible to interacting particles and topological models with a large number of bands.
Multi-output microwave single-photon source using superconducting circuits with longitudinal and transverse couplings
Single-photon devices at microwave frequencies are important for applications in quantum information processing and communication in the microwave regime. In this work, we describe
a proposal of a multi-output single-photon device. We consider two superconducting resonators coupled to a gap-tunable qubit via both its longitudinal and transverse degrees of freedom. Thus, this qubit-resonator coupling differs from the coupling in standard circuit quantum-electrodynamic systems described by the Jaynes-Cummings model. We demonstrate that an effective quadratic coupling between one of the normal modes and the qubit can be induced, and this induced second-order nonlinearity is much larger than that for conventional Kerr-type systems exhibiting photon blockade. Assuming that a coupled normal mode is resonantly driven, we observe that the output fields from the resonators exhibit strong sub-Poissonian photon-number statistics and photon antibunching. Contrary to previous studies on resonant photon blockade, the first-excited state of our device is a pure single-photon Fock state rather than a polariton state, i.e., a highly hybridized qubit-photon state. In addition, it is found that the optical state truncation caused by the strong qubit-induced nonlinearity can lead to an entanglement between the two resonators, even in their steady state under the Markov approximation.
26
Jul
2016
Squeezing and quantum state engineering with Josephson traveling wave amplifiers
We develop a quantum theory describing the input-output properties of Josephson traveling wave parametric amplifiers. This allows us to show how such a device can be used as a source
of nonclassical radiation, and how dispersion engineering can be used to tailor gain profiles and squeezing spectra with attractive properties, ranging from genuinely broadband spectra to „squeezing combs“ consisting of a number of discrete entangled quasimodes. The device’s output field can be used to generate a multi-mode squeezed bath–a powerful resource for dissipative quantum state preparation. In particular, we show how it can be used to generate continuous variable cluster states that are universal for measurement based quantum computing. The favourable scaling properties of the preparation scheme makes it a promising path towards continuous variable quantum computing in the microwave regime.