Leakage outside of the qubit computational subspace, present in many leading experimental platforms, constitutes a threatening error for quantum error correction (QEC) for qubits. We develop a leakage-detection scheme via Hidden Markov models (HMMs) for transmon-based implementations of the surface code. By performing realistic density-matrix simulations of the distance-3 surface code (Surface-17), we observe that leakage is sharply projected and leads to an increase in the surface-code defect probability of neighboring stabilizers. Together with the analog readout of the ancilla qubits, this increase enables the accurate detection of the time and location of leakage. We restore the logical error rate below the memory break-even point by post-selecting out leakage, discarding about 47% of the data. Leakage detection via HMMs opens the prospect for near-term QEC demonstrations, targeted leakage reduction and leakage-aware decoding and is applicable to other experimental platforms.
Superconducting Josephson junction qubits constitute the main current technology for many applications, including scalable quantum computers and thermal devices. Theoretical modeling of such systems is usually done within the two-level approximation. However, accurate theoretical modeling requires taking into account the influence of the higher excited states without limiting the system to the two-level qubit subspace. Here, we study the dynamics and control of a superconducting transmon using the numerically exact stochastic Liouville-von Neumann equation approach. We focus on the role of sta…
Leakage outside of the qubit computational subspace poses a threatening challenge to quantum error correction (QEC). We propose a scheme using two leakage-reduction units (LRUs) that mitigate these issues for a transmon-based surface code, without requiring an overhead in terms of hardware or QEC-cycle time as in previous proposals. For data qubits we consider a microwave drive to transfer leakage to the readout resonator, where it quickly decays, ensuring that this negligibly affects the coherence within the computational subspace for realistic system parameters. For ancilla qubits we apply a…
Improved error correction with leakage reduction units built into qubit measurement in a superconducting quantum processor
QuTech（夸特克）；Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学）；Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学卡弗里纳米科学研究所）；SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research（荷兰空间研究协会）
Users of quantum computers must be able to confirm they are indeed functioning as intended, even when the devices are remotely accessed. In particular, if the Hilbert space dimension of the components are not as advertised -- for instance if the qubits suffer leakage -- errors can ensue and protocols may be rendered insecure. We refine the method of delayed vectors, adapted from classical chaos theory to quantum systems, and apply it remotely on the IBMQ platform -- a quantum computer composed of transmon qubits. The method witnesses, in a model-independent fashion, dynamical signatures of hig…
We introduce the sudden variant (SNZ) of the Net Zero scheme realizing controlled-$Z$ (CZ) gates by baseband flux control of transmon frequency. SNZ CZ gates operate at the speed limit of transverse coupling between computational and non-computational states by maximizing intermediate leakage. The key advantage of SNZ is tuneup simplicity, owing to the regular structure of conditional phase and leakage as a function of two control parameters. We realize SNZ CZ gates in a multi-transmon processor, achieving $99.93\pm0.24\%$ fidelity and $0.10\pm0.02\%$ leakage. SNZ is compatible with scalable s…
We numerically study the implementation of a universal two-qubit gate set, composed of CNOT, Hadamard, phase and $π/8$ gates, for transmon-based systems. The control signals to implement such gates are obtained using the Chopped Random Basis optimal control technique, with a target gate infidelity of $10^{-2}$. During the optimization processes we account for the leakage toward non-computational states, an important non-ideality affecting transmon qubits. We also test and benchmark the optimal control solutions against the introduction of Gaussian white noise and spectral distortion, two key n…
Recent experimental work on superconducting transmon qubits in 3D cavities show that their coherence times are increased by an order of magnitude compared to their 2D cavity counterparts. However to take advantage of these coherence times while scaling up the number of qubits it is advantageous to address individual qubits which are all coupled to the same 3D cavity fields. The challenge in controlling this system comes from spectral crowding, where leakage transition of qubits are close to computational transitions in other. Here it is shown that fast pulses are possible which address single …
A common approach to realize conditional-phase (CZ) gates in transmon qubits relies on flux control of the qubit frequency to make computational states interact with non-computational ones using a fast-adiabatic trajectory to minimize leakage. We develop a bipolar flux-pulsing method with two key advantages over the traditional unipolar variant. First, the action of the bipolar pulse is robust to long-timescale linear-dynamical distortions in the flux-control line, facilitating tuneup and ensuring atomic repeatability. Second, the flux symmetry of the transmon Hamiltonian makes the conditional…
In this work we analyze the implementation of a control-phase gate through the resonance between the $|11\rangle$ and $|20\rangle$ states of two statically coupled transmons. We find that there are many different controls for the transmon frequency that implement the same gate with fidelities around $99.8\%$ ($T_1=T_2^{*}=17$ $μ$s) and $99.99\%$ ($T_1=T_2^{*}=300$ $μ$s) within a time that approaches the theoretical limit. All controls can be brought to this accuracy by calibrating the waiting time and the destination frequency near the $|11\rangle-|20\rangle$ resonance. However, some controls,…
Implementation of high-fidelity two-qubit operations is a key ingredient for scalable quantum error correction. In superconducting qubit architectures tunable buses have been explored as a means to higher fidelity gates. However, these buses introduce new pathways for leakage. Here we present a modified tunable bus architecture appropriate for fixed-frequency qubits in which the adiabaticity restrictions on gate speed are reduced. We characterize this coupler on a range of two-qubit devices achieving a maximum gate fidelity of $99.85\%$. We further show the calibration is stable over one day.
Superconducting transmon qubits comprise one of the most promising platforms for quantum information processing due to their long coherence times and to their scalability into larger qubit networks. However, their weakly anharmonic spectrum leads to spectral crowding in multiqubit systems, making it challenging to implement fast, high-fidelity gates while avoiding leakage errors. To address this challenge, we use a protocol known as SWIPHT [Phys. Rev. B 91, 161405(R) (2015)], which yields smooth, simple microwave pulses designed to suppress leakage without sacrificing gate speed through spectr…
Fast CZ gate in hybrid fluxonium-transmon systems with tunable couplers
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications（南京邮电大学）；Nanjing University（南京大学）；Shanxi University（山西大学）；Quantum Science Center of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area（粤港澳大湾区量子科学中心）
Reaching high speed, high fidelity qubit operations requires precise control over the shape of the underlying pulses. For weakly anharmonic systems, such as superconducting transmon qubits, short gates lead to leakage to states outside of the computational subspace. Control pulses designed with open-loop optimal control may reduce such leakage. However, model inaccuracies can severely limit the usability of such pulses. We implemented a closed-loop optimization that simultaneously adapts all control parameters based on measurements of a cost function built from Clifford gates. By parameterizin…
Randomized Benchmarking allows to efficiently and scalably characterize the average error of an unitary 2-design such as the Clifford group $\mathcal{C}$ on a physical candidate for quantum computation, as long as there are no non-computational leakage levels in the system. We investigate the effect of leakage errors on Randomized Benchmarking induced from an additional level per physical qubit and provide a modified protocol that allows to derive reliable estimates for the error per gate in their presence. We assess the variance of the sequence fidelity corresponding to the number of random s…
Protecting quantum information from errors is essential for large-scale quantum computation. Quantum error correction (QEC) encodes information in entangled states of many qubits, and performs parity measurements to identify errors without destroying the encoded information. However, traditional QEC cannot handle leakage from the qubit computational space. Leakage affects leading experimental platforms, based on trapped ions and superconducting circuits, which use effective qubits within many-level physical systems. We investigate how two-transmon entangled states evolve under repeated parity …
Demonstration of High-Fidelity Entangled Logical Qubits using Transmons
University of Southern California（南加州大学）；Quantum Elements, Inc.（量子元素公司）；IBM Quantum（IBM量子）；RWTH Aachen University（亚琛工业大学）；Forschungszentrum Jülich（于利希研究中心）
The resonator-induced phase gate is a two-qubit operation in which driving a bus resonator induces a state-dependent phase shift on the qubits equivalent to an effective $ZZ$ interaction. In principle, the dispersive nature of the gate offers flexibility for qubit parameters. However, the drive can cause resonator and qubit leakage, the physics of which cannot be fully captured using either the existing Jaynes-Cummings or Kerr models. In this paper, we adopt an ab-initio model based on Josephson nonlinearity for transmon qubits. The ab-initio analysis agrees well with the Kerr model in terms o…
In recent years qubit designs such as transmons approached the fidelities of up to 0.999. However, even these devices are still insufficient for realizing quantum error correction requiring better than 0.9999 fidelity. Topologically protected superconducting qubits are arguably most prospective for building a realistic quantum computer as they are intrinsically protected from noise and leakage errors that occur in transmons. We propose a topologically protected qubit design based on a $π$-periodic Josephson element and a universal set of gates: protected Clifford group and highly robust (with …
We propose and numerically evaluate a protocol to generate an arbitrary quantum state of the magnetization in a magnet. The protocol involves repeatedly exciting a frequency-tunable superconducting transmon and transferring the excitations to the magnet via a microwave cavity. To avoid decay, the protocol must be much shorter than magnon lifetime. Speeding up the protocol by simply shortening the pulses leads to non-resonant leakage of excitations to higher levels of the transmon accompanied by higher decoherence. We discuss how to correct for such leakages by applying counter pulses to de-exc…
We present a scalable scheme for executing the error-correction cycle of a monolithic surface-code fabric composed of fast-flux-tuneable transmon qubits with nearest-neighbor coupling. An eight-qubit unit cell forms the basis for repeating both the quantum hardware and coherent control, enabling spatial multiplexing. This control uses three fixed frequencies for all single-qubit gates and a unique frequency detuning pattern for each qubit in the cell. By pipelining the interaction and readout steps of ancilla-based $X$- and $Z$-type stabilizer measurements, we can engineer detuning patterns th…
A challenge for scaling up quantum processors using frequency-crowded, weakly anharmonic qubits is to drive individual qubits without causing leakage into non-computational levels of the others, while also minimizing the number of control lines. To address this, we implement single-qubit Wah-Wah control in a circuit QED processor with a single feedline for all transmon qubits, operating at the maximum gate speed achievable given the frequency crowding. Randomized benchmarking and quantum process tomography confirm alternating qubit control with $\leq$1% average error per computational step and…
High-fidelity single- and two-qubit gates are essential building blocks for a fault-tolerant quantum computer. While there has been much progress in suppressing single-qubit gate errors in superconducting qubit systems, two-qubit gates still suffer from error rates that are orders of magnitude higher. One limiting factor is the residual ZZ-interaction, which originates from a coupling between computational states and higher-energy states. While this interaction is usually viewed as a nuisance, here we experimentally demonstrate that it can be exploited to produce a universal set of fast single…
Leakage is a particularly damaging error that occurs when a qubit leaves the defined computational subspace. Leakage errors limit the effectiveness of quantum error correcting codes by spreading additional errors to other qubits and corrupting syndrome measurements. The effects of leakage errors on the surface code has been studied in various contexts. However, the effects of a leaked data qubit versus a leaked ancilla qubit can be quite different. Here, we study the effects of data leakage and ancilla leakage separately. We show that data leakage is much less damaging. We show that the surfac…
Physical implementations of quantum bits can contain coherent transitions to energetically close non-qubit states. In particular, for anharmonic oscillator systems such as the superconducting phase qubit and the transmon a two-level approximation is insufficient. We apply optimal control theory to the envelope of a resonant Rabi pulse in a qubit in the presence of a single, weakly off-resonant leakage level. The gate error of a spin flip operation reduces by orders of magnitude compared to simple pulse shapes. Near-perfect gates can be achieved for any pulse duration longer than an intrinsic l…
Surface code is an error-correcting method that can be applied to the implementation of a usable quantum computer. At present, a promising candidate for a usable quantum computer is based on superconductor-specifically transmon. Because errors in transmon-based quantum computers appear biasedly as Z type errors, tailored surface and XZZX codes have been developed to deal with the type errors. Even though these surface codes have been suggested for lattice structures, since transmons-based quantum computers, developed by IBM, have a heavy-hexagon structure, it is natural to ask how tailored sur…
Parametric DRAG for leakage-suppressed exchange gates in superconducting qubits
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Nanjing University（南京大学固体微结构物理学院）；Shishan Laboratory, Suzhou Campus of Nanjing University（南京大学苏州校区石崑实验室）；Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Quantum Information Science and Technology, Nanjing University（南京大学江苏省量子信息科学与技术重点实验室）；Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学量子信息与量子物理协同创新中心）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）
Leakage benchmarking with decohering subgroups in the presence of preparation and measurement errors
National Institute of Standards and Technology（美国国家标准与技术研究院）；University of Colorado, Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校）；Center for Theory of Quantum Matter, University of Colorado, Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校量子物质理论中心）
Pulse-Level Compilation of Measurement-Free Recovery in Transmon Circuits
Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所凝聚态物理国家实验室）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）；Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences（北京量子信息科学研究院）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）
Quantum computing can become scalable through error correction, but logical error rates only decrease with system size when physical errors are sufficiently uncorrelated. During computation, unused high energy levels of the qubits can become excited, creating leakage states that are long-lived and mobile. Particularly for superconducting transmon qubits, this leakage opens a path to errors that are correlated in space and time. Here, we report a reset protocol that returns a qubit to the ground state from all relevant higher level states. We test its performance with the bit-flip stabilizer co…
Transducer leakage error suppression using invariant-based shortcut
School of Physics, Anhui University（安徽大学物理学院）；Laboratory for Advanced Computing and Intelligence Engineering（先进计算与智能工程实验室）；School of Physics, Zhengzhou University（郑州大学物理学院）；Institute of Quantum Materials and Physics, Henan Academy of Science（河南省科学院量子材料与物理研究所）
