Superconducting microwave circuits based on coplanar waveguides (CPW) are susceptible to parasitic slotline modes which can lead to loss and decoherence. We motivate the use of superconductingairbridges as a reliable method for preventing the propagation of these modes. We describe the fabrication of these airbridges on superconducting resonators, which we use to measure the loss due to placing airbridges over CPW lines. We find that the additional loss at single photon levels is small, and decreases at higher drive powers.
We demonstrate a lumped-element Josephson Parametric Amplifier (LJPA), using a single-ended design that includes an on-chip, high-bandwidth flux bias line. The amplifier can be pumpedinto its region of parametric gain through either the input port or through the flux bias line. Broadband amplification is achieved at a tunable frequency $\omega/2 \pi$ between 5 to 7 GHz with quantum-limited noise performance, a gain-bandwidth product greater than 500 MHz, and an input saturation power in excess of -120 dBm. The bias line allows fast frequency tuning of the amplifier, with variations of hundreds of MHz over time scales shorter than 10 ns.
We present a systematic study of the properties of TiN films by varying the deposition conditions in an ultra-high-vacuum reactive magnetron sputtering chamber. By increasing the depositionpressure from 2 to 9 mTorr while keeping a nearly stoichiometric composition of Ti(1-x)N(x) (x=0.5), the film resistivity increases, the dominant crystal orientation changes from (100) to (111), grain boundaries become clearer, and the strong compressive strain changes to weak tensile strain. The TiN films absorb a high concentration of contaminants including hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen when they are exposed to air after deposition. With the target-substrate distance set to 88 mm the contaminant levels increase from ~0.1% to ~10% as the pressure is increased from 2 to 9 mTorr. The contaminant concentrations also correlate with in-plane distance from the center of the substrate and increase by roughly two orders of magnitude as the target-substrate distance is increased from 88 mm to 266 mm. These contaminants are found to strongly influence the properties of TiN films. For instance, the resistivity of stoichiometric films increases by around a factor of 5 as the oxygen content increases from 0.1% to 11%. These results suggest that the sputtered TiN particle energy is critical in determining the TiN film properties, and that it is important to control this energy to obtain high-quality TiN films. Superconducting coplanar waveguide resonators made from a series of nearly stoichiometric films grown at pressures from 2 mTorr to 7 mTorr show an increase in intrinsic quality factor from ~10^4 to ~10^6 as the magnitude of the compressive strain decreases from nearly 3800 MPa to approximately 150 MPa and the oxygen content increases from 0.1% to 8%. The films with a higher oxygen content exhibit lower loss, but the nonuniformity of the oxygen incorporation hinders the use of sputtered TiN in larger circuits.
. Compiled versions of Shor’s
algorithm have been demonstrated"]on ensemble quantum systems[2] and photonic
systems[3-5], however this has yet to be shown using solid state quantum bits
(qubits). Two advantages of superconducting qubit architectures are the use of
conventional microfabrication techniques, which allow straightforward scaling
to large numbers of qubits, and a toolkit of circuit elements that can be used
to engineer a variety of qubit types and interactions[6, 7]. Using a number of
recent qubit control and hardware advances [7-13], here we demonstrate a
nine-quantum-element solid-state QuP and show three experiments to highlight
its capabilities. We begin by characterizing the device with spectroscopy.
Next, we produces coherent interactions between five qubits and verify bi- and
tripartite entanglement via quantum state tomography (QST) [8, 12, 14, 15]. In
the final experiment, we run a three-qubit compiled version of Shor’s algorithm
to factor the number 15, and successfully find the prime factors 48% of the
time. Improvements in the superconducting qubit coherence times and more
complex circuits should provide the resources necessary to factor larger
composite numbers and run more intricate quantum algorithms.