Light waves do not interact in vacuum, but may mix through various parametric processes when traveling in a nonlinear medium. In particular, a high-amplitude wave can be leveraged tofrequency convert a low-amplitude signal, as long as the overall energy and momentum of interacting photons are conserved. These conditions are typically met when all waves propagate in the medium with identical phase velocity along a particular axis. In this work, we investigate an alternative scheme by which an input microwave signal propagating along a 1-dimensional Josephson metamaterial is converted to an output wave propagating in the opposite direction. The interaction is mediated by a pump wave propagating at low phase velocity. In this novel regime, the input signal is exponentially attenuated as it travels down the device. We exploit this process to implement a robust on-chip microwave isolator that can be reconfigured into a reciprocal and tunable coupler. The device mode of operation is selected in situ, along with its working frequency over a wide microwave range. In the 5.5-8.5 GHz range, we measure an isolation over 15 dB on a typical bandwidth of 100 MHz, on par with the best existing on-chip isolators. Substantial margin for improvement exists through design optimization and by reducing fabrication disorder, opening new avenues for microwave routing and processing in superconducting circuits.
Binary classical information is routinely encoded in the two metastable states of a dynamical system. Since these states may exhibit macroscopic lifetimes, the encoded information inheritsa strong protection against bit-flips. A recent qubit – the cat-qubit – is encoded in the manifold of metastable states of a quantum dynamical system, thereby acquiring bit-flip protection. An outstanding challenge is to gain quantum control over such a system without breaking its protection. If this challenge is met, significant shortcuts in hardware overhead are forecast for quantum computing. In this experiment, we implement a cat-qubit with bit-flip times exceeding ten seconds. This is a four order of magnitude improvement over previous cat-qubit implementations, and six orders of magnitude enhancement over the single photon lifetime that compose this dynamical qubit. This was achieved by introducing a quantum tomography protocol that does not break bit-flip protection. We prepare and image quantum superposition states, and measure phase-flip times above 490 nanoseconds. Most importantly, we control the phase of these superpositions while maintaining the bit-flip time above ten seconds. This work demonstrates quantum operations that preserve macroscopic bit-flip times, a necessary step to scale these dynamical qubits into fully protected hardware-efficient architectures.
We propose a novel approach to generate, protect and control GKP qubits. It employs a microwave frequency comb parametrically modulating a Josephson circuit to enforce a dissipativedynamics of a high impedance circuit mode, autonomously stabilizing the finite-energy GKP code. The encoded GKP qubit is robustly protected against all dominant decoherence channels plaguing superconducting circuits but quasi-particle poisoning. In particular, noise from ancillary modes leveraged for dissipation engineering does not propagate at the logical level. In a state-of-the-art experimental setup, we estimate that the encoded qubit lifetime could extend two orders of magnitude beyond the break-even point, with substantial margin for improvement through progress in fabrication and control electronics. Qubit initialization, readout and control via Clifford gates can be performed while maintaining the code stabilization, paving the way toward the assembly of GKP qubits in a fault-tolerant quantum computing architecture.
low-weight operations with an ancilla to extract information about errors without causing backaction on the encoded system. Essentially, ancilla errors must not propagate to the encodedsystem and induce errors beyond those which can be corrected. The current schemes for achieving this fault-tolerance to ancilla errors come at the cost of increased overhead requirements. An efficient way to extract error syndromes in a fault-tolerant manner is by using a single ancilla with strongly biased noise channel. Typically, however, required elementary operations can become challenging when the noise is extremely biased. We propose to overcome this shortcoming by using a bosonic-cat ancilla in a parametrically driven nonlinear cavity. Such a cat-qubit experiences only bit-flip noise and is stabilized against phase-flips. To highlight the flexibility of this approach, we illustrate the syndrome extraction process in a variety of codes such as qubit-based toric codes, bosonic cat- and Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) codes. Our results open a path for realizing hardware-efficient, fault-tolerant error syndrome extraction.
Modular quantum computing architectures require fast and efficient distribution of quantum information through propagating signals. Here we report rapid, on-demand quantum state transferbetween two remote superconducting cavity quantum memories through traveling microwave photons. We demonstrate a quantum communication channel by deterministic transfer of quantum bits with 76% fidelity. Heralding on errors induced by experimental imperfection can improve this to 87% with a success probability of 0.87. By partial transfer of a microwave photon, we generate remote entanglement at a rate that exceeds photon loss in either memory by more than a factor of three. We further show the transfer of quantum error correction code words that will allow deterministic mitigation of photon loss. These results pave the way for scaling superconducting quantum devices through modular quantum networks.
Electromagnetic modes are instrumental in building quantum machines. In this experiment, we introduce a method to manipulate these modes by effectively controlling their phase space.Preventing access to a single energy level, corresponding to a number of photons N, confined the dynamics of the field to levels 0 to N-1. Under a resonant drive, the level occupation was found to oscillate in time, similarly to an N-level system. Performing a direct Wigner tomography of the field revealed its nonclassical features, including a Schr\“{o}dinger cat-like state at half period in the evolution. This fine control of the field in its phase space may enable applications in quantum information and metrology.
Making a system state follow a prescribed trajectory despite fluctuations and
errors commonly consists in monitoring an observable (temperature,
blood-glucose level…) and reactingon its controllers (heater power, insulin
amount …). In the quantum domain, there is a change of paradigm in feedback
since measurements modify the state of the system, most dramatically when the
trajectory goes through superpositions of measurement eigenstates. Here, we
demonstrate the stabilization of an arbitrary trajectory of a superconducting
qubit by measurement based feedback. The protocol benefits from the long
coherence time ($T_2>10 mu$s) of the 3D transmon qubit, the high efficiency
(82%) of the phase preserving Josephson amplifier, and fast electronics
ensuring less than 500 ns delay. At discrete time intervals, the state of the
qubit is measured and corrected in case an error is detected. For Rabi
oscillations, where the discrete measurements occur when the qubit is supposed
to be in the measurement pointer states, we demonstrate an average fidelity of
85% to the targeted trajectory. For Ramsey oscillations, which does not go
through pointer states, the average fidelity reaches 75%. Incidentally, we
demonstrate a fast reset protocol allowing to cool a 3D transmon qubit down to
0.6% in the excited state.