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
02
Sep
2015
On-chip quantum feedback control of a superconducting qubit
Quantum feedback is a technique for measuring a qubit and applying appropriate feedback depending on the measurement results. Here, we propose a new on-chip quantum feedback method
where the measurement-result information is not taken from the chip to the outside of a dilution refrigerator. This can be done by using a selective qubit-energy shift induced by measurement apparatus. We demonstrate on-chip quantum feedback and succeed in the rapid initialization of a qubit by flipping the qubit state only when we detect the ground state of the qubit. The feedback loop of our quantum feedback method closed on a chip, and so the operating time needed to control a qubit is of the order of 10 ns. This operating time is shorter than with the convectional off-chip feedback method. Our on-chip quantum feedback technique opens many possibilities such as an application to quantum information processing and providing an understanding of the foundation of thermodynamics for quantum systems.
01
Sep
2015
Suppression of dephasing by qubit motion in superconducting circuits
We suggest and demonstrate a protocol which suppresses dephasing due to the low-frequency noise by qubit motion, i.e., transfer of the logical qubit of information in a system of n≥2
physical qubits. The protocol requires only the nearest-neighbor coupling and is applicable to different qubit structures. We further analyze its effectiveness against noises with arbitrary correlations. Our analysis, together with experiments using up to three superconducting qubits, shows that for the realistic uncorrelated noises, qubit motion increases the dephasing time of the logical qubit as n‾‾√. In general, the protocol provides a diagnostic tool to measure the noise correlations.
31
Aug
2015
Controlling properties of a hybrid Cooper pair box interacting with a nanomechanical resonator in the presence of Kerr nonlinearities and losses
We consider the Jaynes-Cummings model describing the interaction of a Cooper pair box (CPB) and a nanoresonator (NR) in the presence of a Kerr medium and losses The evolution of the
entropy of both subsystems and the CPB population inversion were calculated numerically. It is found that these properties increase when the NR frequency is time-dependent, even in the presence of losses; the effect is very sensitive to detuning and disappears in the resonant regime. The roles played by the losses affecting the CPB and the NR are also compared.
Closing a quantum feedback loop inside a cryostat: Autonomous state-preparation and long-time memory of a superconducting qubit
We propose to use a cryogenic nonlinear resonator for the projective readout, classical memory, and feedback for a superconducting qubit. This approach sidesteps many of the inefficiencies
inherent in two-way communication between temperature stages in typical systems with room temperature controllers, and avoids increasing the cryogenic heat load. This controller may find a broad range of uses in multi-qubit systems, but here we analyze two specific demonstrative cases in single qubit-control. In the first case, the nonlinear controller is used to initialize the qubit in a definite eigenstate. And in the second case, the qubit’s state is read into the controller’s classical memory, where it is stored for an indefinite period of time, and then used to reinstate the measured state after the qubit has decayed. We analyze the properties of this system and we show simulations of the time evolution for the full system dynamics.
27
Aug
2015
Tunable coupling of transmission-line microwave resonators mediated by an rf SQUID
We realize tunable coupling between two superconducting transmission line resonators. The coupling is mediated by a non-hysteretic rf SQUID acting as a flux-tunable mutual inductance
between the resonators. From the mode distance observed in spectroscopy experiments, we derive a coupling strength ranging between -320MHz and 37 MHz. In the case where the coupling strength is about zero, the microwave power cross transmission between the two resonators can be reduced by almost four orders of magnitude compared to the case where the coupling is switched on. In addition, we observe parametric amplification by applying a suitable additional drive tone.
26
Aug
2015
Observation of Floquet states in a strongly driven artificial atom
We present experiments on the driven dynamics of a two-level superconducting artificial atom. The driving strength reaches 4.78 GHz, significantly exceeding the transition frequency
of 2.288 GHz. The observed dynamics is described in terms of quasienergies and quasienergy states, in agreement with Floquet theory. In addition, we observe the role of pulse shaping in the dynamics, as determined by non-adiabatic transitions between Floquet states, and we implement subnanosecond single-qubit operations. These results pave the way to quantum control using strong driving with applications in quantum technologies.
Exploring Interacting Quantum Many-Body Systems by Experimentally Creating Continuous Matrix Product States in Superconducting Circuits
Improving the understanding of strongly correlated quantum many body systems such as gases of interacting atoms or electrons is one of the most important challenges in modern condensed
matter physics, materials research and chemistry. Enormous progress has been made in the past decades in developing both classical and quantum approaches to calculate, simulate and experimentally probe the properties of such systems. In this work we use a combination of classical and quantum methods to experimentally explore the properties of an interacting quantum gas by creating experimental realizations of continuous matrix product states – a class of states which has proven extremely powerful as a variational ansatz for numerical simulations. By systematically preparing and probing these states using a circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) system we experimentally determine a good approximation to the ground-state wave function of the Lieb-Liniger Hamiltonian, which describes an interacting Bose gas in one dimension. Since the simulated Hamiltonian is encoded in the measurement observable rather than the controlled quantum system, this approach has the potential to apply to exotic models involving multicomponent interacting fields. Our findings also hint at the possibility of experimentally exploring general properties of matrix product states and entanglement theory. The scheme presented here is applicable to a broad range of systems exploiting strong and tunable light-matter interactions.
Rotating-frame relaxation as a noise spectrum analyzer of a superconducting qubit undergoing driven evolution
Gate operations in a quantum information processor are generally realized by tailoring specific periods of free and driven evolution of a quantum system. Unwanted environmental noise,
which may in principle be distinct during these two periods, acts to decohere the system and increase the gate error rate. While there has been significant progress characterizing noise processes during free evolution, the corresponding driven-evolution case is more challenging as the noise being probed is also extant during the characterization protocol. Here we demonstrate the noise spectroscopy (0.1 – 200 MHz) of a superconducting flux qubit during driven evolution by using a robust spin-locking pulse sequence to measure relaxation (T1rho) in the rotating frame. In the case of flux noise, we resolve spectral features due to coherent fluctuators, and further identify a signature of the 1MHz defect in a time-domain spin-echo experiment. The driven-evolution noise spectroscopy complements free-evolution methods, enabling the means to characterize and distinguish various noise processes relevant for universal quantum control.
Independent, extensible control of same-frequency superconducting qubits by selective broadcasting
A critical ingredient for realizing large-scale quantum information processors will be the ability to make economical use of qubit control hardware. We demonstrate an extensible strategy
for reusing control hardware on same-frequency transmon qubits in a circuit QED chip with surface-code-compatible connectivity. A vector switch matrix enables selective broadcasting of input pulses to multiple transmons with individual tailoring of pulse quadratures for each, as required to minimize the effects of leakage on weakly anharmonic qubits. Using randomized benchmarking, we compare multiple broadcasting strategies that each pass the surface-code error threshold for single-qubit gates. In particular, we introduce a selective-broadcasting control strategy using five pulse primitives, which allows independent, simultaneous Clifford gates on arbitrary numbers of qubits.
25
Aug
2015
The Flux Qubit Revisited
The scalable application of quantum information science will stand on reproducible and controllable high-coherence quantum bits (qubits). In this work, we revisit the design and fabrication
of the superconducting flux qubit, achieving a planar device with broad frequency tunability, strong anharmonicity, high reproducibility, and coherence times in excess of 40 us at its flux-insensitive point. Qubit relaxation times across 21 qubits of widely varying designs are consistently matched with a single model involving ohmic charge noise, quasiparticle fluctuations, resonator loss, and 1/f flux noise, a noise source previously considered primarily in the context of dephasing. We furthermore demonstrate that qubit dephasing at the flux-insensitive point is dominated by residual thermal photons in the readout resonator. The resulting photon shot noise is mitigated using a dynamical decoupling protocol, reaching T2 ~ 80 us , approximately the 2T1 limit. In addition to realizing a dramatically improved flux qubit, our results uniquely identify photon shot noise as limiting T2 in contemporary state-of-art qubits based on transverse qubit-resonator interaction.