Superconducting transmon qubits have established as a leading candidate for quantum computation, as well as a flexible platform for exploring exotic quantum phases and dynamics. However,physical coupling naturally yields isotropic transverse interactions between qubits, restricting their access to diverse quantum phases that require spatially dependent interactions. Here, we demonstrate the simultaneous realization of both pairing (XX-YY) and hopping (XX+YY) interactions between transmon qubits by Floquet engineering. The coherent superposition of these interactions enables independent control over the XX and YY terms, yielding anisotropic transverse interactions. By aligning the transverse interactions along a 1D chain of six qubits, as calibrated via Aharonov-Bohm interference in synthetic space, we synthesize a transverse field Ising chain model and explore its dynamical phase transition under varying external field. The scalable synthesis of anisotropic transverse interactions paves the way for the implementation of more complex physical systems requiring spatially dependent interactions, enriching the toolbox for engineering quantum phases with superconducting qubits.
Mixers play a crucial role in superconducting quantum computing, primarily by facilitating frequency conversion of signals to enable precise control and readout of quantum states. However,imperfections, particularly carrier leakage and unwanted sideband signal, can significantly compromise control fidelity. To mitigate these defects, regular and precise mixer calibrations are indispensable, yet they pose a formidable challenge in large-scale quantum control. Here, we introduce an in situ calibration technique and outcome-focused mixer calibration scheme using superconducting qubits. Our method leverages the qubit’s response to imperfect signals, allowing for calibration without modifying the wiring configuration. We experimentally validate the efficacy of this technique by benchmarking single-qubit gate fidelity and qubit coherence time.
As superconducting quantum computing continues to advance at an unprecedented pace, there is a compelling demand for the innovation of specialized electronic instruments that act ascrucial conduits between quantum processors and host computers. Here, we introduce a Microwave Measurement and Control System (M2CS) dedicated for large-scale superconducting quantum processors. M2CS features a compact modular design that balances overall performance, scalability, and flexibility. Electronic tests of M2CS show key metrics comparable to commercial instruments. Benchmark tests on transmon superconducting qubits further show qubit coherence and gate fidelities comparable to state-of-the-art results, confirming M2CS’s capability to meet the stringent requirements of quantum experiments run on intermediate-scale quantum processors. The system’s compact and scalable design offers significant room for further enhancements that could accommodate the measurement and control requirements of over 1000 qubits, and can also be adopted to other quantum computing platforms such as trapped ions and silicon quantum dots. The M2CS architecture may also be applied to wider range of scenarios, such as microwave kinetic inductance detectors, as well as phased array radar systems.
Random fluctuations can lead to cooperative effects in complex systems. We here report the experimental observation of noise-induced quantum synchronization in a chain of superconductingtransmon qubits with nearest-neighbor interactions. The application of Gaussian white noise to a single site leads to synchronous oscillations in the entire chain. We show that the two synchronized end qubits are entangled, with nonzero concurrence, and that they belong to a class of generalized Bell states known as maximally entangled mixed states, whose entanglement cannot be increased by any global unitary. We further demonstrate the stability against frequency detuning of both synchronization and entanglement by determining the corresponding generalized Arnold tongue diagrams. Our results highlight the constructive influence of noise in a quantum many-body system and uncover the potential role of synchronization for mixed-state quantum information science.
Superconducting qubits are a promising platform for building fault-tolerant quantum computers, with recent achievement showing the suppression of logical error with increasing codesize. However, leakage into non-computational states, a common issue in practical quantum systems including superconducting circuits, introduces correlated errors that undermine QEC scalability. Here, we propose and demonstrate a leakage reduction scheme utilizing tunable couplers, a widely adopted ingredient in large-scale superconducting quantum processors. Leveraging the strong frequency tunability of the couplers and stray interaction between the couplers and readout resonators, we eliminate state leakage on the couplers, thus suppressing space-correlated errors caused by population propagation among the couplers. Assisted by the couplers, we further reduce leakage to higher qubit levels with high efficiency (98.1%) and low error rate on the computational subspace (0.58%), suppressing time-correlated errors during QEC cycles. The performance of our scheme demonstrates its potential as an indispensable building block for scalable QEC with superconducting qubits.
Quantum teleportation~cite{Bennett1993} is of both fundamental interest and great practical importance in quantum information science. To date, quantum teleportation has been implementedin 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}.
Scaling is now a key challenge in superconducting quantum computing. One solution is to build modular systems in which smaller-scale quantum modules are individually constructed andcalibrated, and then assembled into a larger architecture. This, however, requires the development of suitable interconnects. Here, we report low-loss interconnects based on pure aluminium coaxial cables and on-chip impedance transformers featuring quality factors up to 8.1×105, which is comparable to the performance of our transmon qubits fabricated on single-crystal sapphire substrate. We use these interconnects to link five quantum modules with inter-module quantum state transfer and Bell state fidelities up to 99\%. To benchmark the overall performance of the processor, we create maximally-entangled, multi-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. The generated inter-module four-qubit GHZ state exhibits 92.0\% fidelity. We also entangle up to 12 qubits in a GHZ state with 55.8±1.8% fidelity, which is above the genuine multipartite entanglement threshold of 1/2. These results represent a viable modular approach for large-scale superconducting quantum processors.
Unwanted ZZ interaction is a quantum-mechanical crosstalk phenomenon which correlates qubit dynamics and is ubiquitous in superconducting qubit system. It adversely affects the qualityof quantum operations and can be detrimental in scalable quantum information processing. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a practically extensible approach for complete cancellation of residual ZZ interaction between fixed-frequency transmon qubits, which are known for long coherence and simple control. We apply to the intermediate coupler that connects the qubits a weak microwave drive at a properly chosen frequency in order to noninvasively induce ac Stark shift for ZZ cancellation. We verify the cancellation performance by measuring vanishing two-qubit entangling phases and ZZ correlations. In addition, we implement randomized benchmarking experiment to extract the idling gate fidelity which shows good agreement with the coherence limit, demonstrating the effectiveness of ZZ cancellation. Our method allows independent addressability of each qubit-qubit connection, and is applicable to both non-tunable and tunable coupler, promising better compatibility with future large-scale quantum processors.
Scalable quantum information processing requires the ability to tune multi-qubit interactions. This makes the precise manipulation of quantum states particularly difficult for multi-qubitinteractions because tunability unavoidably introduces sensitivity to fluctuations in the tuned parameters, leading to erroneous multi-qubit gate operations. The performance of quantum algorithms may be severely compromised by coherent multi-qubit errors. It is therefore imperative to understand how these fluctuations affect multi-qubit interactions and, more importantly, to mitigate their influence. In this study, we demonstrate how to implement dynamical-decoupling techniques to suppress the two-qubit analogue of the dephasing on a superconducting quantum device featuring a compact tunable coupler, a trending technology that enables the fast manipulation of qubit–qubit interactions. The pure-dephasing time shows an up to ~14 times enhancement on average when using robust sequences. The results are in good agreement with the noise generated from room-temperature circuits. Our study further reveals the decohering processes associated with tunable couplers and establishes a framework to develop gates and sequences robust against two-qubit errors.
Higher-order topological insulators (TIs) and superconductors (TSCs) give rise to new bulk and boundary physics, as well as new classes of topological phase transitions. While higher-orderTIs have been actively studied on many platforms, the experimental study of higher-order TSCs has thus far been greatly hindered due to the scarcity of material realizations. To advance the study of higher-order TSCs, in this work we carry out the simulation of a two-dimensional spinless second-order TSC belonging to the symmetry class D in a superconducting qubit. Owing to the great flexibility and controllability of the quantum simulator, we observe the realization of higher-order topology directly through the measurement of the pseudo-spin texture in momentum space of the bulk for the first time, in sharp contrast to previous experiments based on the detection of gapless boundary modes in real space. Also through the measurement of the evolution of pseudo-spin texture with parameters, we further observe novel topological phase transitions from the second-order TSC to the trivial superconductor, as well as to the first-order TSC with nonzero Chern number. Our work sheds new light on the study of higher-order topological phases and topological phase transitions.