Fast, high fidelity control and readout of protected superconducting qubits are fundamentally challenging due to their inherent insensitivity. We propose a flux qubit variation whichenjoys a tunable level of protection against relaxation to resolve this outstanding issue. Our qubit design, the double-shunted flux qubit (DSFQ), realizes a generic double-well potential through its three junction ring geometry. One of the junctions is tunable, making it possible to control the barrier height and thus the level of protection. We analyze single- and two-qubit gate operations that rely on lowering the barrier. We show that this is a viable method that results in high fidelity gates as the non-computational states are not occupied during operations. Further, we show how the effective coupling to a readout resonator can be controlled by adjusting the externally applied flux while the DSFQ is protected from decaying into the readout resonator. Finally, we also study a double-loop gradiometric version of the DSFQ which is exponentially insensitive to variations in the global magnetic field, even when the loop areas are non-identical.
Multi-qubit parity measurements are at the core of many quantum error correction schemes. Extracting multi-qubit parity information typically involves using a sequence of multiple two-qubitgates. In this paper, we propose a superconducting circuit device with native support for multi-qubit parity-controlled gates (PCG). These are gates that perform rotations on a parity ancilla based on the multi-qubit parity operator of adjacent qubits, and can be directly used to perform multi-qubit parity measurements. The circuit consists of a set of concatenated Josephson ring modulators and effectively realizes a set of transmon-like qubits with strong longitudinal nearest-neighbor couplings. PCGs are implemented by applying microwave drives to the parity ancilla at specific frequencies. We investigate the scheme’s performance with numerical simulation using realistic parameter choices and decoherence rates, and find that the device can perform four-qubit PCGs in 30 ns with process fidelity surpassing 99%. Furthermore, we study the effects of parameter disorder and spurious coupling between next-nearest neighboring qubits. Our results indicate that this approach to realizing PCGs constitute an interesting candidate for near-term quantum error correction experiments.
Logical devices based on electrical currents are ubiquitous in modern society. However, digital logic does have some drawbacks such as a relatively high power consumption. It is thereforeof great interest to seek alternative means to build logical circuits that can either work as stand-alone devices or in conjunction with more traditional electronic circuits. One direction that holds great promise is the use of heat currents for logical components. In the present paper, we discuss a recent abstract proposal for a quantum thermal transistor and provide a concrete design of such a device using superconducting circuits. Using a circuit quantum electrodynamics Jaynes-Cummings model, we propose a three-terminal device that allows heat transfer from source to drain, depending on the temperature of a bath coupled at the gate modulator, and show that it provides similar properties to a conventional semiconductor transistor.
We show how a superconducting circuit consisting of three identical, non-linear oscillators in series considered in terms of its electrical modes can implement a strong, native three-bodyinteraction among qubits. Because of strong interactions, part of the qubit-subspace is coupled to higher levels. The remaining qubit states can be used to implement a restricted Fredkin gate, which in turn implements a CNOT-gate or a spin transistor. Including non-symmetric contributions from couplings to ground and external control we alter the circuit slightly to compensate, and find average fidelities for our implementation of the above gates above 99.5% with operation times on the order of a nanosecond. Additionally we show how to analytically include all orders of the cosine contributions from Josephson junctions to the Hamiltonian of a superconducting circuit.