We use a scanning superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) to image the magnetic flux produced by a superconducting device designed for quantum computing. The nanometer-scaleSQUID-on-tip probe reveals the flow of superconducting current through the circuit as well as the locations of trapped magnetic flux. In particular, maps of current flowing out of a flux-control line in the vicinity of a qubit show how these elements are coupled, providing insight on how to optimize qubit control.
A challenge in building large-scale superconducting quantum processors is to find the right balance between coherence, qubit addressability, qubit-qubit coupling strength, circuit complexityand the number of required control lines. Leading all-microwave approaches for coupling two qubits require comparatively few control lines and benefit from high coherence but suffer from frequency crowding and limited addressability in multi-qubit settings. Here, we overcome these limitations by realizing an all-microwave controlled-phase gate between two transversely coupled transmon qubits which are far detuned compared to the qubit anharmonicity. The gate is activated by applying a single, strong microwave tone to one of the qubits, inducing a coupling between the two-qubit |f,g⟩ and |g,e⟩ states, with |g⟩, |e⟩, and |f⟩ denoting the lowest energy states of a transmon qubit. Interleaved randomized benchmarking yields a gate fidelity of 97.5±0.3% at a gate duration of 126ns, with the dominant error source being decoherence. We model the gate in presence of the strong drive field using Floquet theory and find good agreement with our data. Our gate constitutes a promising alternative to present two-qubit gates and could have hardware scaling advantages in large-scale quantum processors as it neither requires additional drive lines nor tunable couplers.
A major challenge in operating multi-qubit quantum processors is to mitigate multi-qubit coherent errors. For superconducting circuits, besides crosstalk originating from imperfectisolation of control lines, dispersive coupling between qubits is a major source of multi-qubit coherent errors. We benchmark phase errors in a controlled-phase gate due to dispersive coupling of either of the qubits involved in the gate to one or more spectator qubits. We measure the associated gate infidelity using quantum process tomography. In addition, we point out that, due to coupling of the gate qubits to a non-computational state during the gate, two-qubit conditional phase errors are enhanced. Our work is important for understanding limits to the fidelity of two-qubit gates with finite on/off ratio in multi-qubit settings.
Semiconductor qubits rely on the control of charge and spin degrees of freedom of electrons or holes confined in quantum dots (QDs). They constitute a promising approach to quantuminformation processing [1, 2], complementary to superconducting qubits [3]. Typically, semiconductor qubit-qubit coupling is short range [1, 2, 4, 5], effectively limiting qubit distance to the spatial extent of the wavefunction of the confined particle, which represents a significant constraint towards scaling to reach dense 1D or 2D arrays of QD qubits. Following the success of circuit quantum eletrodynamics [6], the strong coupling regime between the charge [7, 8] and spin [9, 10, 11] degrees of freedom of electrons confined in semiconducting QDs interacting with individual photons stored in a microwave resonator has recently been achieved. In this letter, we demonstrate coherent coupling between a superconducting transmon qubit and a semiconductor double quantum dot (DQD) charge qubit mediated by virtual microwave photon excitations in a tunable high-impedance SQUID array resonator acting as a quantum bus [12, 13, 14]. The transmon-charge qubit coherent coupling rate (∼21 MHz) exceeds the linewidth of both the transmon (∼0.8 MHz) and the DQD charge (∼3 MHz) qubit. By tuning the qubits into resonance for a controlled amount of time, we observe coherent oscillations between the constituents of this hybrid quantum system. These results enable a new class of experiments exploring the use of the two-qubit interactions mediated by microwave photons to create entangled states between semiconductor and superconducting qubits. The methods and techniques presented here are transferable to QD devices based on other material systems and can be beneficial for spin-based hybrid systems.
Three-dimensional microwave waveguide cavities are essential tools for many cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments. However, the need to control quantum emitters with dc magneticfields inside the cavity often limits such experiments to normal-conducting cavities with relatively low quality factors of about 104. Similarly, controlling quantum emitters with dc electric fields in normal- and superconducting waveguide cavities has so far been difficult, because the insertion of dc electrodes has strongly limited the quality factor. Here, we present a method to apply dc electric fields within a superconducting waveguide cavity, which is based on the insertion of dc electrodes at the nodes of the microwave electric field. Moreover, we present a method to apply dc magnetic fields within the same cavity by trapping the magnetic flux in holes positioned in facing walls of the cavity. We demonstrate that the TE301 mode of such a superconducting, rectangular cavity made from niobium maintains a high internal quality factor of Qint∼1.7⋅106 at the few photon level and a base temperature of 3 K. A cloud of Rydberg atoms coupled to the microwave electric field of the cavity is used to probe the applied dc electric and magnetic fields via the quadratic Stark effect and the Zeeman effect, respectively.
Developing fast and accurate control and readout techniques is an important challenge in quantum information processing with semiconductor qubits. Here, we study the dynamics and thecoherence properties of a GaAs/AlGaAs double quantum dot (DQD) charge qubit strongly coupled to a high-impedance SQUID array resonator. We drive qubit transitions with synthesized microwave pulses and perform qubit readout through the state dependent frequency shift imparted by the qubit on the dispersively coupled resonator. We perform Rabi oscillation, Ramsey fringe, energy relaxation and Hahn-echo measurements and find significantly reduced decoherence rates down to γ2/2π∼3MHz corresponding to coherence times of up to T2∼50ns for charge states in gate defined quantum dot qubits.
The speed of quantum gates and measurements is a decisive factor for the overall fidelity of quantum protocols when performed on physical qubits with finite coherence time. Reducingthe time required to distinguish qubit states with high fidelity is therefore a critical goal in quantum information science. The state-of-the-art readout of superconducting qubits is based on the dispersive interaction with a readout resonator. Here, we bring this technique to its current limit and demonstrate how the careful design of system parameters leads to fast and high-fidelity measurements without affecting qubit coherence. We achieve this result by increasing the dispersive interaction strength, by choosing an optimal linewidth of the readout resonator, by employing a Purcell filter, and by utilizing phase-sensitive parametric amplification. In our experiment, we measure 98.25% readout fidelity in only 48 ns, when minimizing read-out time, and 99.2% in 88 ns, when maximizing the fidelity, limited predominantly by the qubit lifetime of 7.6 us. The presented scheme is also expected to be suitable for integration into a multiplexed readout architecture.
In recent years the interest in studying interactions of Rydberg atoms or ensembles thereof with optical and microwave frequency fields has steadily increased, both in the context ofbasic research and for potential applications in quantum information processing. We present measurements of the dispersive interaction between an ensemble of helium atoms in the 37s Rydberg state and a single resonator mode by extracting the amplitude and phase change of a weak microwave probe tone transmitted through the cavity. The results are in quantitative agreement with predictions made on the basis of the dispersive Tavis-Cummings Hamiltonian. We study this system with the goal of realizing a hybrid between superconducting circuits and Rydberg atoms. We measure maximal collective coupling strengths of 1 MHz, corresponding to 3*10^3 Rydberg atoms coupled to the cavity. As expected, the dispersive shift is found to be inversely proportional to the atom-cavity detuning and proportional to the number of Rydberg atoms. This possibility of measuring the number of Rydberg atoms in a nondestructive manner is relevant for quantitatively evaluating scattering cross sections in experiments with Rydberg atoms.
Low-loss waveguides are required for quantum communication at distances beyond the chip-scale for any low-temperature solid-state implementation of quantum information processors. Wemeasure and analyze the attenuation constant of commercially available microwave-frequency waveguides down to millikelvin temperatures and single photon levels. More specifically, we characterize the frequency-dependent loss of a range of coaxial and rectangular microwave waveguides down to 0.005dB/m using a resonant-cavity technique. We study the loss tangent and relative permittivity of commonly used dielectric waveguide materials by measurements of the internal quality factors and their comparison with established loss models. The results of our characterization are relevant for accurately predicting the signal levels at the input of cryogenic devices, for reducing the loss in any detection chain, and for estimating the heat load induced by signal dissipation in cryogenic systems.
Topological insulators and superconductors at finite temperature can be characterised by the topological Uhlmann phase. However, the direct experimental measurement in condensed mattersystems 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.