Low-noise microwave amplification is crucial for detecting weak signals in quantum technologies and radio astronomy. An ideal device must amplify a broad range of frequencies whileadding minimal noise, and be directional, so that it favors the observer’s direction while protecting the source from its environment. Current amplifiers do not satisfy all these requirements, severely limiting the scalability of superconducting quantum devices. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of building a near-ideal quantum amplifier using a homogeneous Josephson junction array and the non-trivial topology of its dynamics. Our design relies on breaking time-reversal symmetry via a non-local parametric drive, which induces directional amplification in a way similar to edge states in topological insulators. The system then acquires unprecedented amplifying properties, such as a gain growing exponentially with system size, exponential suppression of back-wards noise, and topological protection against disorder. We show that these features allow a state-of-the-art superconducting device to manifest near-quantum-limited directional amplification with a gain largely surpassing 20 dB and -30 dB of reverse attenuation over a large bandwidth of GHz. This opens the door for integrating near-ideal and compact pre-amplifiers on the same chip as quantum processors.
The heavy fluxonium at zero external flux has a long-lived state when coupled capacitively to any other system. We analyze it by projecting all the fluxonium relevant operators intothe qutrit subspace, as this long-lived configuration corresponds to the second excited fluxonium level. This state becomes a bound-state in the continuum (BIC) when the coupling occurs to an extended state supporting a continuum of modes. In the case without noise, we find BIC decay times that can be much larger than seconds T1≫s when the fluxonium is coupled to superconducting waveguide, while typical device frequencies are in the order of GHz. We have also analyzed the noise in a realistic situation, arguing that the most dangerous noise source is the well-known 1/f flux noise. Even in its presence, we show that decay times could reach the range of T1∼10ms.
We analyze the coupling of two flux qubits with a general many-body projector into the low-energy subspace. Specifically, we extract the effective Hamiltonians that controls the dynamicsof two qubits when they are coupled via a capacitor and/or via a Josephson junction. While the capacitor induces a static charge coupling tunable by design, the Josephson junction produces a magnetic-like interaction easily tunable by replacing the junction with a SQUID. Those two elements allow to engineer qubits Hamiltonians with XX, YY and ZZ interactions, including ultra-strongly coupled ones. We present an exhaustive numerical study for two three-Josephson junctions flux qubit that can be directly used in experimental work. The method developed here, namely the numerical tool to extract qubit effective Hamiltonians at strong coupling, can be applied to replicate our analysis for general systems of many qubits and any type of coupling.
A flux qubit can interact strongly when it is capacitively coupled to other circuit elements. This interaction can be separated in two parts, one acting on the qubit subspaces and onein which excited states mediate the interaction. The first term dominates the interaction between the flux qubit and an LC-resonator, leading to ultrastrong couplings of the form σy(a+a†), which complement the inductive σxi(a†−a) coupling. However, when coupling two flux qubits capacitively, all terms need to be taken into account, leading to complex non-stoquastic ultrastrong interaction of the σyσy, σzσz and σxσx type. Our theory explains all these interactions, describing them in terms of general circuit properties—coupling capacitances, qubit gaps, inductive, Josephson and capactive energies—, that apply to a wide variety of circuits and flux qubit designs.
In this work, we propose a flexible architecture of microwave resonators with tuneable couplings to perform quantum simulations of molecular chemistry problems. The architecture buildson the experience of the D-Wave design, working with nearly harmonic circuits instead of with qubits. This architecture, or modifications of it, can be used to emulate molecular processes such as vibronic transitions. Furthermore, we discuss several aspects of these emulations, such as dynamical ranges of the physical parameters, quenching times necessary for diabaticity and finally the possibility of implementing anharmonic corrections to the force fields by exploiting certain nonlinear features of superconducting devices.
We study effective light-matter interactions in a circuit QED system consisting of a single LC resonator, which is coupled symmetrically to multiple superconducting qubits. Startingfrom a minimal circuit model, we demonstrate that in addition to the usual collective qubit-photon coupling the resulting Hamiltonian contains direct qubit-qubit interactions, which prevent the otherwise expected superradiant phase transition in the ground state of this system. Moreover, these qubit-qubit interactions are responsible for an opposite mechanism, which at very strong couplings completely decouples the photon mode and projects the qubits into a highly entangled ground state. These findings shed new light on the controversy over the existence of superradiant phase transitions in cavity and circuit QED systems, and show that the physics of ultrastrong light-matter interactions in two- or multi-qubit settings differ drastically from the more familiar one qubit case.
In this work we develop a semi-analytical variational ansatz to study the properties of few photon excitations interacting with a collection of quantum emitters in regimes that go beyondthe rotating wave approximation. This method can be used to approximate both the static and dynamical properties of a superconducting qubit in an open transmission line, including the spontaneous emission spectrum and the resonances in scattering experiments. The approximations are quantitatively accurate for rather strong couplings, as shown by a direct comparison to Matrix-Product-State numerical methods, and provide also a good qualitative description for stronger couplings well beyond the Markovian regime.
Quantum correlations present in a broadband two-line squeezed microwave state can induce entanglement in a spatially separated bipartite system consisting of either two single qubitsor two qubit ensembles. By using an appropriate master equation for a bipartite quantum system in contact with two separate but entangled baths, the generating entanglement process in spatially separated quantum systems is thoroughly characterized. Our results provide evidence that this entanglement transfer by dissipation is feasible yielding to a steady-state amount of entanglement in the bipartite quantum system which can be optimized for a wide range of realistic physical systems that include state-of-the-art experiments with NV centers in diamond, superconducting qubits or even magnetic molecules embedded in a crystalline matrix.
A superconducting qubit coupled to an open transmission line represents an implementation of the spin-boson model with a broadband environment. We show that this environment can beengineered by introducing partial reflectors into the transmission line, allowing to shape the spectral function, J({\omega}), of the spin-boson model. The spectral function can be accessed by measuring the resonance fluorescence of the qubit, which provides information on both the engineered environment and the coupling between qubit and transmission line. The spectral function of a transmission line without partial reflectors is found to be Ohmic over a wide frequency range, whereas a peaked spectral density is found for the shaped environment. Our work lays the ground for future quantum simulations of other, more involved, impurity models with superconducting circuits.
We introduce a lattice model of interacting spins and bosons that leads to Luttinger-liquid physics, and allows for quantitative tests of the theory of bosonization by means of trapped-ionor superconducting-circuit experiments. By using a variational bosonization ansatz, we calculate the power-law decay of spin and boson correlation functions, and study their dependence on a single tunable parameter, namely a bosonic driving. For small drivings, Matrix-Product-States (MPS) numerical methods are shown to be efficient and validate our ansatz. Conversely, even static MPS become inefficient for large-driving regimes, such that the experiment can potentially outperform classical numerics, achieving one of the goals of quantum simulations.