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
17
Jan
2025
Perfect, Pretty Good and Optimized Quantum State Transfer in Transmon qubit chains
Chains of transmon qubits are considered promising systems to implement different quantum information tasks. In particular as channels that perform high-quality quantum state transfer.
We study how changing the interaction strength between the chain qubits allows us to obtain perfect or pretty good state transfer and present explicit analytic expressions for their transmission fidelity. For particular values of the interactions between the qubits, transmon chains are equivalent to generalized SSH chains and show the traditional traits observed in chains with topological states, localized states at the extremes of the chain, and eigenvalues that lie inside the spectral gap. Consequently, we study the quantum state transfer on chains with dimerized interactions, looking for chains with fast transfer times. We show that, in many cases, asking for fast transfer times results in chains with dimerized interactions that do not have topological states.
Frozonium: Freezing Anharmonicity in Floquet Superconducting Circuits
Floquet engineering is a powerful method that can be used to modify the properties of interacting many-body Hamiltonians via the application of periodic time-dependent drives. Here
we consider the physics of an inductively shunted superconducting Josephson junction in the presence of Floquet drives in the fluxonium regime and beyond, which we dub the frozonium artificial atom. We find that in the vicinity of special ratios of the drive amplitude and frequency, the many-body dynamics can be tuned to that of an effectively linear bosonic oscillator, with additional nonlinear corrections that are suppressed in higher powers of the drive frequency. By analyzing the inverse participation ratios between the time-evolved frozonium wavefunctions and the eigenbasis of a linear oscillator, we demonstrate the ability to achieve a novel dynamical control using a combination of numerical exact diagonalization and Floquet-Magnus expansion. We discuss the physics of resonances between quasi-energy states induced by the drive, and ways to mitigate their effects. We also highlight the enhanced protection of frozonium against external sources of noise present in experimental setups. This work lays the foundation for future applications in quantum memory and bosonic quantum control using superconducting circuits.
15
Jan
2025
High-frequency readout free from transmon multi-excitation resonances
Quantum computation will rely on quantum error correction to counteract decoherence. Successfully implementing an error correction protocol requires the fidelity of qubit operations
to be well-above error correction thresholds. In superconducting quantum computers, measurement of the qubit state remains the lowest-fidelity operation. For the transmon, a prototypical superconducting qubit, measurement is carried out by scattering a microwave tone off the qubit. Conventionally, the frequency of this tone is of the same order as the transmon frequency. The measurement fidelity in this approach is limited by multi-excitation resonances in the transmon spectrum which are activated at high readout power. These resonances excite the qubit outside of the computational basis, violating the desired quantum non-demolition character of the measurement. Here, we find that strongly detuning the readout frequency from that of the transmon exponentially suppresses the strength of spurious multi-excitation resonances. By increasing the readout frequency up to twelve times the transmon frequency, we achieve a quantum non-demolition measurement fidelity of 99.93% with a residual probability of leakage to non-computational states of only 0.02%.
14
Jan
2025
Exact amplitudes of parametric processes in driven Josephson circuits
We present a general approach for analyzing arbitrary parametric processes in Josephson circuits within a single degree of freedom approximation. Introducing a systematic normal-ordered
expansion for the Hamiltonian of parametrically driven superconducting circuits we present a flexible procedure to describe parametric processes and to compare different circuit designs for particular applications. We obtain formally exact amplitudes (`supercoefficients‘) of these parametric processes for driven SNAIL-based and SQUID-based circuits. The corresponding amplitudes contain complete information about the circuit topology, the form of the nonlinearity, and the parametric drive, making them, in particular, well-suited for the study of the strong drive regime. We present a closed-form expression for supercoefficients describing circuits without stray inductors and a tractable formulation for those with it. We demonstrate the versatility of the approach by applying it to the estimation of Kerr-cat qubit Hamiltonian parameters and by examining the criterion for the emergence of chaos in Kerr-cat qubits. Additionally, we extend the approach to multi-degree-of-freedom circuits comprising multiple linear modes weakly coupled to a single nonlinear mode. We apply this generalized framework to study the activation of a beam-splitter interaction between two cavities coupled via driven nonlinear elements. Finally, utilizing the flexibility of the proposed approach, we separately derive supercoefficients for the higher-harmonics model of Josephson junctions, circuits with multiple drives, and the expansion of the Hamiltonian in the exact eigenstate basis for Josephson circuits with specific symmetries.
12
Jan
2025
Realization of tilted Dirac-like microwave cone in superconducting circuit lattices
Dirac-like band crossings are paradigms in condensed matter systems to emulate high-energy physics phenomena. They are associated with two aspects: gap and tilting. The ability to design
sign-changing gap gives rise to band topology, whereas the tilting of band crossings which is a gateway for large gravity-like effects remains uncharted. In this work, we introduce an experimental platform to realize tilted Dirac-like microwave cone in large-scale superconducting circuit lattices. The direction and magnitude of the tilt can be controlled by engineering the axially preferred second neighbor coupling. We demonstrate three lattices with 731-site LC resonator featuring tilt values of up to 59% of relative difference in the opposite-direction group velocities. This is obtained by reconstructing the density of states (DOS) of measured microwave resonance frequencies. Harnessing the tilt of Dirac-like band crossings lays the foundation for weaving the fabric of an emergent solid-state spacetime.
10
Jan
2025
Dissipating quartets of excitations in a superconducting circuit
Over the past decade, autonomous stabilization of bosonic qubits has emerged as a promising approach for hardware-efficient protection of quantum information. However, applying these
techniques to more complex encodings than the Schrödinger cat code requires exquisite control of high-order wave mixing processes. The challenge is to enable specific multiphotonic dissipation channels while avoiding unintended non-linear interactions. In this work, we leverage a genuine six-wave mixing process enabled by a near Kerr-free Josephson element to enforce dissipation of quartets of excitations in a high-impedance superconducting resonator. Owing to residual non-linearities stemming from stray inductances in our circuit, this dissipation channel is only effective when the resonator holds a specific number of photons. Applying it to the fourth excited state of the resonator, we show an order of magnitude enhancement of the state decay rate while only marginally impacting the relaxation and coherence of lower energy states. Given that stray inductances could be strongly reduced through simple modifications in circuit design and that our methods can be adapted to activate even higher-order dissipation channels, these results pave the way toward the dynamical stabilization of four-component Schrödinger cat qubits and even more complex bosonic qubits.
09
Jan
2025
Efficient Qubit Calibration by Binary-Search Hamiltonian Tracking
We present a real-time method for calibrating the frequency of a resonantly driven qubit. The real-time processing capabilities of a controller dynamically compute adaptive probing
sequences for qubit-frequency estimation. Each probing time and drive frequency are calculated to divide the prior probability distribution into two branches, following a locally optimal strategy that mimics a conventional binary search. We show the algorithm’s efficacy by stabilizing a flux-tunable transmon qubit, leading to improved coherence and gate fidelity. By feeding forward the updated qubit frequency, the FPGA-powered control electronics also mitigates non-Markovian noise in the system, which is detrimental to quantum error correction. Our protocol highlights the importance of feedback in improving the calibration and stability of qubits subject to drift and can be readily applied to other qubit platforms.
08
Jan
2025
Realizing Lattice Surgery on Two Distance-Three Repetition Codes with Superconducting Qubits
Quantum error correction is needed for quantum computers to be capable of fault-tolerantly executing algorithms using hundreds of logical qubits. Recent experiments have demonstrated
subthreshold error rates for state preservation of a single logical qubit. In addition, the realization of universal quantum computation requires the implementation of logical entangling gates. Lattice surgery offers a practical approach for implementing such gates, particularly in planar quantum processor layouts. In this work, we demonstrate lattice surgery between two distance-three repetition-code qubits by splitting a single distance-three surface-code qubit. Using a quantum circuit fault-tolerant to bit-flip errors, we achieve an improvement in the value of the decoded ZZ logical two-qubit observable compared to a similar non-encoded circuit. By preparing the surface-code qubit in initial states parametrized by a varying polar angle, we evaluate the performance of the lattice surgery operation for non-cardinal states on the logical Bloch sphere and employ logical two-qubit tomography to reconstruct the Pauli transfer matrix of the operation. In this way, we demonstrate the functional building blocks needed for lattice surgery operations on larger-distance codes based on superconducting circuits.
07
Jan
2025
Four-body coupler for superconducting qubits based on Josephson parametric oscillators
We theoretically propose a circuit of the four-body coupler for superconducting qubits based on Josephson parametric oscillators (JPOs). Our coupler for the four-body interaction has
a superconducting loop, similar to a capacitively shunted flux qubit, where an external magnetic flux set to half a flux quantum is threaded. This coupler circuit is a specific setup of the circuit called superconducting nonlinear asymmetric inductive elements (SNAIL) and also is a generalization of the previously proposed one for the four-body interaction of JPOs. We clarify roles of circuit parameters in the four-body interaction and, in particular, show that the four-body coupling constant in our circuit can be significantly increased by tuning capacitance of the coupler or the area ratio of the Josephson junctions of the coupler.
Spin Environment of a Superconducting Qubit in High Magnetic Fields
Superconducting qubits equipped with quantum non-demolishing readout and active feedback can be used as information engines to probe and manipulate microscopic degrees of freedom, whether
intentionally designed or naturally occurring in their environment. In the case of spin systems, the required magnetic field bias presents a challenge for superconductors and Josephson junctions. Here we demonstrate a granular aluminum nanojunction fluxonium qubit (gralmonium) with spectrum and coherence resilient to fields beyond one Tesla. Sweeping the field reveals a paramagnetic spin-1/2 ensemble, which is the dominant gralmonium loss mechanism when the electron spin resonance matches the qubit. We also observe a suppression of fast flux noise in magnetic field, suggesting the freezing of surface spins. Using an active state stabilization sequence, the qubit hyperpolarizes long-lived two-level systems (TLSs) in its environment, previously speculated to be spins. Surprisingly, the coupling to these TLSs is unaffected by magnetic fields, leaving the question of their origin open. The robust operation of gralmoniums in Tesla fields offers new opportunities to explore unresolved questions in spin environment dynamics and facilitates hybrid architectures linking superconducting qubits with spin systems.