Dielectrics with low loss at microwave frequencies are imperative for high-coherence solid-state quantum computing platforms. We study the dielectric loss of hexagonal boron nitride(hBN) thin films in the microwave regime by measuring the quality factor of parallel-plate capacitors (PPCs) made of NbSe2-hBN-NbSe2 heterostructures integrated into superconducting circuits. The extracted microwave loss tangent of hBN is bounded to be at most in the mid-10-6 range in the low temperature, single-photon regime. We integrate hBN PPCs with aluminum Josephson junctions to realize transmon qubits with coherence times reaching 25 μs, consistent with the hBN loss tangent inferred from resonator measurements. The hBN PPC reduces the qubit feature size by approximately two-orders of magnitude compared to conventional all-aluminum coplanar transmons. Our results establish hBN as a promising dielectric for building high-coherence quantum circuits with substantially reduced footprint and, with a high energy participation that helps to reduce unwanted qubit cross-talk.
Particle transport and localization phenomena in condensed-matter systems can be modeled using a tight-binding lattice Hamiltonian. The ideal experimental emulation of such a modelutilizes simultaneous, high-fidelity control and readout of each lattice site in a highly coherent quantum system. Here, we experimentally study quantum transport in one-dimensional and two-dimensional tight-binding lattices, emulated by a fully controllable 3×3 array of superconducting qubits. We probe the propagation of entanglement throughout the lattice and extract the degree of localization in the Anderson and Wannier-Stark regimes in the presence of site-tunable disorder strengths and gradients. Our results are in quantitative agreement with numerical simulations and match theoretical predictions based on the tight-binding model. The demonstrated level of experimental control and accuracy in extracting the system observables of interest will enable the exploration of larger, interacting lattices where numerical simulations become intractable.
Demonstrating the quantum computational advantage will require high-fidelity control and readout of multi-qubit systems. As system size increases, multiplexed qubit readout becomesa practical necessity to limit the growth of resource overhead. Many contemporary qubit-state discriminators presume single-qubit operating conditions or require considerable computational effort, limiting their potential extensibility. Here, we present multi-qubit readout using neural networks as state discriminators. We compare our approach to contemporary methods employed on a quantum device with five superconducting qubits and frequency-multiplexed readout. We find that fully-connected feedforward neural networks increase the qubit-state-assignment fidelity for our system. Relative to contemporary discriminators, the assignment error rate is reduced by up to 25 % due to the compensation of system-dependent nonidealities such as readout crosstalk which is reduced by up to one order of magnitude. Our work demonstrates a potentially extensible building block for high-fidelity readout relevant to both near-term devices and future fault-tolerant systems.
Interacting many-body quantum systems show a rich array of physical phenomena and dynamical properties, but are notoriously difficult to study: they are challenging analytically andexponentially difficult to simulate on classical computers. Small-scale quantum information processors hold the promise to efficiently emulate these systems, but characterizing their dynamics is experimentally challenging, requiring probes beyond simple correlation functions and multi-body tomographic methods. Here, we demonstrate the measurement of out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs), one of the most effective tools for studying quantum system evolution and processes like quantum thermalization. We implement a 3×3 two-dimensional hard-core Bose-Hubbard lattice with a superconducting circuit, study its time-reversibility by performing a Loschmidt echo, and measure OTOCs that enable us to observe the propagation of quantum information. A central requirement for our experiments is the ability to coherently reverse time evolution, which we achieve with a digital-analog simulation scheme. In the presence of frequency disorder, we observe that localization can partially be overcome with more particles present, a possible signature of many-body localization in two dimensions.
High-fidelity two-qubit gates at scale are a key requirement to realize the full promise of quantum computation and simulation. The advent and use of coupler elements to tunably controltwo-qubit interactions has improved operational fidelity in many-qubit systems by reducing parasitic coupling and frequency crowding issues. However, two-qubit gate errors still limit the capability of near-term quantum applications. In particular, the existing framework for tunable couplers based on the dispersive approximation does not fully incorporate three-body multi-level dynamics, which are essential for addressing coherent leakage to the coupler and parasitic longitudinal (ZZ) interactions during two-qubit gates. Here, we present a new systematic approach that goes beyond the dispersive approximation and outlines how to optimize the coupler-control and exploit the engineered level structure of the coupler. Using this approach, we experimentally demonstrate a CZ gate with 99.76 ± 0.10 % fidelity and a ZZ-free iSWAP gate with 99.86 ± 0.32 % fidelity, which are close to their T1 limits.
Realizing a fully connected network of quantum processors requires the ability to distribute quantum entanglement. For distant processing nodes, this can be achieved by generating,routing, and capturing spatially entangled itinerant photons. In this work, we demonstrate deterministic generation of such photons using superconducting transmon qubits that are directly coupled to a waveguide. In particular, we generate two-photon N00N states and show that the state and spatial entanglement of the emitted photons can be tuned via the qubit frequencies. Using quadrature amplitude detection, we reconstruct the moments and correlations of the photonic modes and demonstrate state preparation fidelities of 84%. Our results provide a path towards realizing quantum communication and teleportation protocols using non-classical, spatially entangled itinerant photons.
The dominant source of decoherence in contemporary frequency-tunable superconducting qubits is 1/f flux noise. To understand its origin and find ways to minimize its impact, we systematicallystudy flux noise amplitudes in more than 50 flux qubits with varied SQUID geometry parameters and compare our results to a microscopic model of magnetic spin defects located at the interfaces surrounding the SQUID loops. Our data are in agreement with an extension of the previously proposed model, based on numerical simulations of the current distribution in the investigated SQUIDs. Our results and detailed model provide a guide for minimizing the flux noise susceptibility in future circuits.
Noise that exhibits significant temporal and spatial correlations across multiple qubits can be especially harmful to both fault-tolerant quantum computation and quantum-enhanced metrology.However, a complete spectral characterization of the noise environment of even a two-qubit system has not been reported thus far. We propose and experimentally validate a protocol for two-qubit dephasing noise spectroscopy based on continuous control modulation. By combining ideas from spin-locking relaxometry with a statistically motivated robust estimation approach, our protocol allows for the simultaneous reconstruction of all the single-qubit and two-qubit cross-correlation spectra, including access to their distinctive non-classical features. Only single-qubit control manipulations and state-tomography measurements are employed, with no need for entangled-state preparation or readout of two-qubit observables. While our experimental validation uses two superconducting qubits coupled to a shared engineered noise source, our methodology is portable to a variety of dephasing-dominated qubit architectures. By pushing quantum noise spectroscopy beyond the single-qubit setting, our work paves the way to characterizing spatiotemporal correlations in both engineered and naturally occurring noise environments.
In the cavity-QED architecture, photon number fluctuations from residual cavity photons cause qubit dephasing due to the AC Stark effect. These unwanted photons originate from a varietyof sources, such as thermal radiation, leftover measurement photons, and crosstalk. Using a capacitively-shunted flux qubit coupled to a transmission line cavity, we demonstrate a method that identifies and distinguishes coherent and thermal photons based on noise-spectral reconstruction from time-domain spin-locking relaxometry. Using these measurements, we attribute the limiting dephasing source in our system to thermal photons, rather than coherent photons. By improving the cryogenic attenuation on lines leading to the cavity, we successfully suppress residual thermal photons and achieve T1-limited spin-echo decay time. The spin-locking noise spectroscopy technique can readily be applied to other qubit modalities for identifying general asymmetric non-classical noise spectra.