Fast, Lifetime-Preserving Readout for High-Coherence Quantum Annealers

  1. Jeffrey A. Grover,
  2. James I. Basham,
  3. Alexander Marakov,
  4. Steven M. Disseler,
  5. Robert T. Hinkey,
  6. Moe Khalil,
  7. Zachary A. Stegen,
  8. Thomas Chamberlin,
  9. Wade DeGottardi,
  10. David J. Clarke,
  11. James R. Medford,
  12. Joel D. Strand,
  13. Micah J. A. Stoutimore,
  14. Sergey Novikov,
  15. David G. Ferguson,
  16. Daniel Lidar,
  17. Kenneth M. Zick,
  18. and Anthony J. Przybysz
We demonstrate, for the first time, that a quantum flux parametron (QFP) is capable of acting as both isolator and amplifier in the readout circuit of a capacitively shunted flux qubit
(CSFQ). By treating the QFP like a tunable coupler and biasing it such that the coupling is off, we show that T1 of the CSFQ is not impacted by Purcell loss from its low-Q readout resonator (Qe=760) despite being detuned by only 40 MHz. When annealed, the QFP amplifies the qubit’s persistent current signal such that it generates a flux qubit-state-dependent frequency shift of 85 MHz in the readout resonator, which is over 9 times its linewidth. The device is shown to read out a flux qubit in the persistent current basis with fidelities surpassing 98.6% with only 80 ns integration, and reaches fidelities of 99.6% when integrated for 1 μs. This combination of speed and isolation is critical to the readout of high-coherence quantum annealers.