By driving a 3D transmon with microwave fields, we generate an effective avoided energy-level crossing. Then we chirp microwave frequency, which is equivalent to driving the systemthrough the avoided energy-level crossing by sweeping the avoided crossing. A double-passage chirp produces Landau-Zener-St\“uckelberg-Majorana interference that agree well with the numerical results. Our method is fully applicable to other quantum systems that contain no intrinsic avoided level crossing, providing an alternative approach for quantum control and quantum simulation.
We present a direct experimental observation of the correspondence between Landau-Zener transition and Kibble-Zurek mechanism with a superconducting qubit system. We develop a time-resolvedapproach to study quantum dynamics of the Landau-Zener transition. By using this method, we observe the key features of the correspondence between Landau-Zener transition and Kibble-Zurek mechanism, e.g., the boundary between the adiabatic and impulse regions, the freeze-out phenomenon in the impulse region. Remarkably, the scaling behavior of the population in the excited state, an analogical phenomenon originally predicted in Kibble-Zurek mechanism, is also observed in the Landau-Zener transition.
We propose an experimental scheme to simulate the dynamical quantum Hall effect and the related interaction-induced topological transition with a superconducting-qubit array. We showthat a one-dimensional Heisenberg model with tunable parameters can be realized in an array of superconducting qubits. The quantized plateaus, which is a feature of the dynamical quantum Hall effect, will emerge in the Berry curvature of the superconducting qubits as a function of the coupling strength between nearest neighbor qubits. We numerically calculate the Berry curvatures of two-, four- and six-qubit arrays, and find that the interaction-induced topological transition can be easily observed with the simplest two-qubit array. Furthermore, we analyze some practical conditions in typical experiments for observing such dynamical quantum Hall effect
Geometric quantum manipulation and Landau-Zener interferometry have been separately explored in many quantum systems. In this Letter, we combine these two approaches to study the dynamicsof a superconducting phase qubit. We experimentally demonstrate Landau-Zener interferometry based on the pure geometric phases in this solid-state qubit. We observe the interference caused by a pure geometric phase accumulated in the evolution between two consecutive Landau-Zener transitions, while the dynamical phase is canceled out by a spin-echo pulse. The full controllability of the qubit state as a function of the intrinsically robust geometric phase provides a promising approach for quantum state manipulation.
We propose a scheme to clarify the coupling nature between superconducting
Josephson qubits andmicroscopic two-level systems. Although dominant interest
in studying two-level systemswas in phase qubits previously, we find that the
sensitivity of the generally used spectral method in phase qubits is not
sufficient to evaluate the exact form of the coupling. On the contrary, our
numerical calculation shows that the coupling strength changes remarkably with
the flux bias for a flux qubit, providing a useful tool to investigate the
coupling mechanism between the two-level systems and qubits.
A composite system of Majorana-hosted semiconductor nanowire and
superconducting flux qubit is inves- tigated. It is found that the coupling
between these two subsystems can be controlledelectrically, supplying a
convenient method to implement {pi}/8 phase gate of a Majorana-based
topological qubit. We also present a scheme to transfer information from the
flux qubit to the topological qubit using Landau-Zener transition. In addition,
a structure named top-flux-flux is proposed to retrieve the information stored
in the topological qubit. With the demonstration of the entanglement of two
topological qubits, it is very promising to do quantum information process with
this hybrid system.