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
20
Feb
2023
All-microwave leakage reduction units for quantum error correction with superconducting transmon qubits
Minimizing leakage from computational states is a challenge when using many-level systems like superconducting quantum circuits as qubits. We realize and extend the quantum-hardware-efficient,
all-microwave leakage reduction unit (LRU) for transmons in a circuit QED architecture proposed by Battistel et al. This LRU effectively reduces leakage in the second- and third-excited transmon states with up to 99% efficacy in 220 ns, with minimum impact on the qubit subspace. As a first application in the context of quantum error correction, we demonstrate the ability of multiple simultaneous LRUs to reduce the error detection rate and to suppress leakage buildup within 1% in data and ancilla qubits over 50 cycles of a weight-2 parity measurement.
17
Feb
2023
Error per single-qubit gate below 10−4 in a superconducting qubit
Implementing arbitrary single-qubit gates with near perfect fidelity is among the most fundamental requirements in gate-based quantum information processing. In this work, we fabric
a transmon qubit with long coherence times and demonstrate single-qubit gates with the average gate error below 10−4, i.e. (7.42±0.04)×10−5 by randomized benchmarking (RB). To understand the error sources, we experimentally obtain an error budget, consisting of the decoherence errors lower bounded by (4.62±0.04)×10−5 and the leakage rate per gate of (1.16±0.04)×10−5. Moreover, we reconstruct the process matrices for the single-qubit gates by the gate set tomography (GST), with which we simulate RB sequences and obtain single-qubit fedlities consistent with experimental results. We also observe non-Markovian behavior in the experiment of long-sequence GST, which may provide guidance for further calibration. The demonstration extends the upper limit that the average fidelity of single-qubit gates can reach in a transmon-qubit system, and thus can be an essential step towards practical and reliable quantum computation in the near future.
Deterministic quantum teleportation between distant superconducting chips
Quantum teleportation~cite{Bennett1993} is of both fundamental interest and great practical importance in quantum information science. To date, quantum teleportation has been implemented
in various physical systems~\cite{Pirandola2015}, among which superconducting qubits are of particular practical significance as they emerge as a leading system to realize large-scale quantum computation~\cite{Arute2019,Wu2021}. Nevertheless, the number of superconducting qubits on the same chip is severely limited by the available chip size, the cooling power, and the wiring complexity. Realization of quantum teleportation and remote computation over qubits on distant superconducting chips is a key quantum communication technology to scaling up the system through a distributed quantum computational network~\cite{Gottesman1999,Eisert2000,Jiang2007,Kimble2008,Monroe2014}. However, this goal has not been realized yet in experiments due to the technical challenge of making a quantum interconnect between distant superconducting chips and the inefficient transfer of flying microwave photons over the lossy interconnects~\cite{Kurpiers2018,Axline2018,Campagne2018,Magnard2020}. Here we demonstrate deterministic teleportation of quantum states and entangling gates between distant superconducting chips connected by a 64-meter-long cable bus featuring an ultralow loss of 0.32~dB/km at cryogenic temperatures, where high fidelity remote entanglement is generated via flying microwave photons utilizing time-reversal-symmetry~\cite{Cirac1997,Korotkov2011}. Apart from the fundamental interest of teleporting macroscopic superconducting qubits over a long distance, our work lays a foundation to realization of large-scale superconducting quantum computation through a distributed computational network~\cite{Gottesman1999,Eisert2000,Jiang2007,Kimble2008,Monroe2014}.
Smoking-gun signatures of non-Markovianity of a superconducting qubit
We describe temporally correlated noise processes that influence the idle evolution of a superconducting transmon qubit. To model the composite qubit-environment system we use quantum
circuit theory, and we show how a circuit Hamiltonian can be derived for transverse noise affecting the qubit. Based on the time-convolutionless projection operator method, we construct a time-local master equation which, when transformed to its canonical Lindblad form, exhbitis a decay rate that is negative at all times, corresponding to eternally non-Markovian dynamics. By expressing the solution of the master equation in the Kraus representation, we identify two crucial non-Markovian phenomena: periodic revivals of coherence, and the appearance of additional frequencies far from the qubit frequency in the precession of the qubit state. When a single qubit gate acts on the qubit state, these extra frequency terms rotate undesirably and they effectively act as the memory of the state prior to the rotation around the Bloch sphere.
Observation of Josephson Harmonics in Tunnel Junctions
An accurate understanding of the Josephson effect is the keystone of quantum information processing with superconducting hardware. Here we show that the celebrated sinφ current-phase
relation (CφR) of Josephson junctions (JJs) fails to fully describe the energy spectra of transmon artificial atoms across various samples and laboratories. While the microscopic theory of JJs contains higher harmonics in the CφR, these have generally been assumed to give insignificant corrections for tunnel JJs, due to the low transparency of the conduction channels. However, this assumption might not be justified given the disordered nature of the commonly used AlOx tunnel barriers. Indeed, a mesoscopic model of tunneling through an inhomogeneous AlOx barrier predicts contributions from higher Josephson harmonics of several %. By including these in the transmon Hamiltonian, we obtain orders of magnitude better agreement between the computed and measured energy spectra. The measurement of Josephson harmonics in the CφR of standard tunnel junctions prompts a reevaluation of current models for superconducting hardware and it offers a highly sensitive probe towards optimizing tunnel barrier uniformity.
16
Feb
2023
Characterization of loss mechanisms in a fluxonium qubit
Using a fluxonium qubit with in situ tunability of its Josephson energy, we characterize its energy relaxation at different flux biases as well as different Josephson energy values.
The relaxation rate at qubit energy values, ranging more than one order of magnitude around the thermal energy kBT, can be quantitatively explained by a combination of dielectric loss and 1/f flux noise with a crossover point. The amplitude of the 1/f flux noise is consistent with that extracted from the qubit dephasing measurements at the flux sensitive points. In the dielectric loss dominant regime, the loss is consistent with that arises from the electric dipole interaction with two-level-system (TLS) defects. In particular, as increasing Josephson energy thus decreasing qubit frequency at the flux insensitive spot, we find that the qubit exhibits increasingly weaker coupling to TLS defects thus desirable for high-fidelity quantum operations.
15
Feb
2023
Shortcuts to adiabaticity in superconducting circuits for fast multi-partite state generation
Shortcuts to adiabaticity provides a flexible method to accelerate and improve a quantum control task beyond adiabatic criteria. Here we propose the reverse-engineering approach to
design the longitudinal coupling between a set of qubits coupled to several field modes, for achieving a fast generation of multi-partite quantum gates in photonic or qubit-based architecture. We show that the enhancing generation time is at the nanosecond scale that does not scale with the number of system components. In addition, our protocol does not suffer noticeable detrimental effects due to the dissipative dynamics. Finally, the possible implementation is discussed with the state-of-the-art circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture.
Microwave amplification via interfering multi-photon processes in a half-waveguide quantum electrodynamics system
We investigate the amplification of a microwave probe signal by a superconducting artificial atom, a transmon, strongly coupled to the end of a one-dimensional semi-infinite transmission
line. The end of the transmission line acts as a mirror for microwave fields. Due to the weak anharmonicity of the artificial atom, a strong pump field creates multi-photon excitations among the dressed states. Transitions between these dressed states, Rabi sidebands, give rise to either amplification or attenuation of the weak probe. We obtain a maximum amplitude amplification of about 18 %, higher than in any previous experiment with a single artificial atom, due to constructive interference between Rabi sidebands. We also characterize the noise properties of the system by measuring the spectrum of spontaneous emission.
14
Feb
2023
Autonomous error correction of a single logical qubit using two transmons
Large-scale quantum computers will inevitably need quantum error correction to protect information against decoherence. Traditional error correction typically requires many qubits,
along with high-efficiency error syndrome measurement and real-time feedback. Autonomous quantum error correction (AQEC) instead uses steady-state bath engineering to perform the correction in a hardware-efficient manner. We realize an AQEC scheme, implemented with only two transmon qubits in a 2D scalable architecture, that actively corrects single-photon loss and passively suppresses low-frequency dephasing using six microwave drives. Compared to uncorrected encoding, factors of 2.0, 5.1, and 1.4 improvements are experimentally witnessed for the logical zero, one, and superposition states. Our results show the potential of implementing hardware-efficient AQEC to enhance the reliability of a transmon-based quantum information processor.
All-microwave manipulation of superconducting qubits with a fixed-frequency transmon coupler
All-microwave control of fixed-frequency superconducting quantum computing circuits is advantageous for minimizing the noise channels and wiring costs. Here we introduce a swap interaction
between two data transmons assisted by the third-order nonlinearity of a coupler transmon under a microwave drive. We model the interaction analytically and numerically and use it to implement an all-microwave controlled-Z gate. The gate based on the coupler-assisted swap transition maintains high drive efficiency and small residual interaction over a wide range of detuning between the data transmons.