Advancements in the fabrication of superconducting quantum devices have highlighted tantalum as a promising material, owing to its low surface oxidation microwave loss at low temperatures.However, tantalum films exhibit significantly larger kinetic inductances compared to materials such as aluminum or niobium. Given the inevitable variations in film thickness, this increased kinetic inductance leads to considerable, uncontrolled frequency variances and shifts in components like superconducting coplanar waveguide (SCPW) resonators. Achieving high precision in resonator frequencies is crucial, particularly when multiple resonators share a common Purcell filter with limited bandwidth in superconducting quantum information processors. Here, we tackle this challenge from both fabrication and design perspectives, achieving a reduction in resonator frequency fluctuation by a factor of more than 100. Concurrently, the internal quality factor of the SCPW resonator remains at high level. Our findings open up new avenues for the enhanced utilization of tantalum in large-scale superconducting chips.
In multi-qubit superconducting systems utilizing flip-chip technology, achieving high accuracy in resonator frequencies is of paramount importance, particularly when multiple resonatorsshare a common Purcell filter with restricted bandwidth. Nevertheless, variations in inter-chip spacing can considerably influence these frequencies. To tackle this issue, we present and experimentally validate the effectiveness of a resonator design. In our design, we etch portions of the metal on the bottom chip that faces the resonator structure on the top chip. This enhanced design substantially improves frequency stability by a factor of over 3.5 compared to the non-optimized design, as evaluated by the root mean square error of a linear fitting of the observed frequency distribution, which is intended to be linear. This advancement is crucial for successful scale-up and achievement of high-fidelity quantum operations.
Shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA) are powerful quantum control methods, allowing quick evolution into target states of otherwise slow adiabatic dynamics. Such methods have widespreadapplications in quantum technologies, and various STA protocols have been demonstrated in closed systems. However, realizing STA for open quantum systems has presented a greater challenge, due to complex controls required in existing proposals. Here we present the first experimental demonstration of STA for open quantum systems, using a superconducting circuit QED system consisting of two coupled bosonic oscillators and a transmon qubit. By applying a counterdiabatic driving pulse, we reduce the adiabatic evolution time of a single lossy mode from 800 ns to 100 ns. In addition, we propose and implement an optimal control protocol to achieve fast and qubit-unconditional equilibrium of multiple lossy modes. Our results pave the way for accelerating dynamics of open quantum systems and have potential applications in designing fast open-system protocols of physical and interdisciplinary interest, such as accelerating bioengineering and chemical reaction dynamics.
Qubit initialization is critical for many quantum algorithms and error correction schemes, and extensive efforts have been made to achieve this with high speed and efficiency. Herewe experimentally demonstrate a fast and high fidelity reset scheme for tunable superconducting qubits. A rapid decay channel is constructed by modulating the flux through a transmon qubit and realizing a swap between the qubit and its readout resonator. The residual excited population can be suppressed to 0.08% ± 0.08% within 34 ns, and the scheme requires no additional chip architecture, projective measurements, or feedback loops. In addition, the scheme has negligible effects on neighboring qubits, and is therefore suitable for large-scale multi-qubit systems. Our method also offers a way of entangling the qubit state with an itinerant single photon, particularly useful in quantum communication and quantum network applications.