Tunable coupling scheme for implementing two-qubit gates on fluxonium qubits

  1. I. N. Moskalenko,
  2. I. S. Besedin,
  3. I.A. Simakov,
  4. and A. V. Ustinov
The superconducting fluxonium circuit is an RF-SQUID-type flux qubit that uses a large inductance built from an array of Josephson junctions or a high kinetic inductance material. This
inductance suppresses charge sensitivity exponentially and flux sensitivity quadratically. In contrast to the transmon qubit, the anharmonicity of fluxonium can be large and positive, allowing for better separation between the low energy qubit manifold of the circuit and higher-lying excited states. Here, we propose a tunable coupling scheme for implementing two-qubit gates on fixed-frequency fluxonium qubits, biased at half flux quantum. In this system, both qubits and coupler are coupled capacitively and implemented as fluxonium circuits with an additional harmonic mode. We investigate the performance of the scheme by simulating a universal two-qubit fSim gate. In the proposed approach, we rely on a planar on-chip architecture for the whole device. Our design is compatible with existing hardware for transmon-based devices, with the additional advantage of lower qubit frequency facilitating high-precision gating.

Quantum beats of a magnetic fluxon in a two-cell SQUID

  1. I. N. Moskalenko,
  2. I. S. Besedin,
  3. S. S. Seidov,
  4. M. V. Fistul,
  5. and A. V. Ustinov
We report a detailed theoretical study of a coherent macroscopic quantum-mechanical phenomenon – quantum beats of a single magnetic fluxon trapped in a two-cell SQUID of high
kinetic inductance. We calculate numerically and analytically the low-lying energy levels of the fluxon, and explore their dependence on externally applied magnetic fields. The quantum dynamics of the fluxon shows quantum beats originating from its coherent quantum tunneling between the SQUID cells. We analyze the experimental setup based on a three-cell SQUID, allowing for time-resolved measurements of quantum beats of the fluxon.