The effective use of current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices is often limited by the noise which is caused by interaction with the environment and affects the fidelity of quantum gates. In transmon qubit systems, the quantum gate fidelity can be improved by applying control pulses that can minimize the effects of the environmental noise. In this work, we employ physics-guided quantum optimal control strategies to design optimal pulses driving quantum gates on superconducting qubit systems. We test our results by conducting experiments on the IBM Q hardware using their OpenPulse API. We compare the performance of our pulse-optimized quantum gates against the default quantum gates and show that the optimized pulses improve the fidelity of the quantum gates, in particular the single-qubit gates. We discuss the challenges we encountered in our work and point to possible future improvements.
Based on a pure solid-state device consisting of two superconducting LC circuits coupled to a superconducting flux qubit, we propose in this paper that the maximally entangled coherent states of the two LC modes can be generated for arbitrary coherent states through flux qubit controls.
We present a scalable scheme for superconducting charge qubits with the assistance of one-dimensional superconducting transmission line resonator (STLR) playing the role of data bus. The coupling between qubit and data bus may be turned on and off by just controlling the gate voltage and externally applied flux of superconducting charge qubit. In our proposal, the entanglement between arbitrary two qubits and $W$ states of three qubits can be generated quickly and easily.
We propose a scheme to realize quantum networking of superconducting qubits based on the opto-mechanical interface. The superconducting qubits interact with the microwave photons, which then couple to the optical photons through the opto-mechanical interface. The interface generates a quantum link between superconducting qubits and optical flying qubits with tunable pulse shapes and carrier frequencies, enabling transmission of quantum information to other superconducting or atomic qubits. We show that the scheme works under realistic experimental conditions and it also provides a way for fast…
We present a new method for determining pulse imperfections and improving the single-gate fidelity in a superconducting qubit. By applying consecutive positive and negative $π$ pulses, we amplify the qubit evolution due to microwave pulse distortion, which causes the qubit state to rotate around an axis perpendicular to the intended rotation axis. Measuring these rotations as a function of pulse period allows us to reconstruct the shape of the microwave pulse arriving at the sample. Using the extracted response to predistort the input signal, we are able to improve the pulse shapes and to reac…
Single flux quantum pulses are a natural candidate for on-chip control of superconducting qubits. We show that they can drive high-fidelity single-qubit rotations---even in leaky transmon qubits---if the pulse sequence is suitably optimized. We achieve this objective by showing that, for these restricted all-digital pulses, genetic algorithms can be made to converge to arbitrarily low error, verified up to a reduction in gate error by 2 orders of magnitude compared to an evenly spaced pulse train. Timing jitter of the pulses is taken into account, exploring the robustness of our optimized sequ…
For quantum information processing, each physical system has different advantage for the implementation and so hybrid systems to benefit from several systems would be able to provide a promising approach. One of the common hybrid approach is to combine a superconducting qubit as a controllable qubit and the other quantum system with a long coherence time as a memory qubit. The superconducting qubit allows us to have an excellent controllability of the quantum states and the memory qubit is capable of storing the information for a long time. By tuning the energy splitting between the supercondu…
We investigate the thermal entanglement in two superconducting qubits for arbitrary interaction strength and ground state frequencies. We calculate the concurrence of the system to quantify the thermal entanglement. We suggest a scheme, where an external tunable coupler qubit sandwich between two superconducting qubits generates entanglement. The behavior of concurrence is analyzed for three different cases, in which we consider the effects of the temperature, the qubit-qubit effective coupling strength, and the qubit frequencies on the thermal entanglement. What deserves mentioning here is th…
Improving coherence times of quantum bits is a fundamental challenge in the field of quantum computing. With long-lived qubits it becomes, however, inefficient to wait until the qubits have relaxed to their ground state after completion of an experiment. Moreover, for error-correction schemes it is import to rapidly re-initialize ancilla parity-check qubits. We present a simple pulsed qubit reset protocol based on a two-pulse sequence. A first pulse transfers the excited state population to a higher excited qubit state and a second pulse into a lossy environment provided by a low-Q transmissio…
We propose a scheme to manipulate a topological spin qubit which is realized with cold atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice. In particular, by introducing a quantum opto-electro-mechanical interface, we are able to first transfer a superconducting qubit state to an atomic qubit state and then to store it into the topological spin qubit. In this way, an efficient topological quantum memory could be constructed for the superconducting qubit. Therefore, we can consolidate the advantages of both the noise resistance of the topological qubits and the scalability of the superconducting qubits …
We describe a scheme that enables a strong Jaynes-Cummings coupling between a topological qubit and a superconducting flux qubit. The coupling strength is dependent on the phase difference between two superconductors on a topological insulator and may be expediently controlled by a phase controller. With this coherent coupling and single-qubit rotations arbitrary unitary operations on the two-qubit hybrid system of topological and flux qubits can be performed. Numerical simulations show that quantum state transfer and entanglement distributing between the topological and superconducting flux q…
We study the time evolution of a qubit linearly coupled with a quantum environment under a sequence of short pi pulses. Our attention is focused on the case where qubit-environment interactions induce the decoherence with population decay. We assume that the environment consists of a set of bosonic excitations. The time evolution of the reduced density matrix for the qubit is calculated in the presence of periodic short pi pulses. We confirm that the decoherence is suppressed if the pulse interval is shorter than the correlation time for qubit-environment interactions.
We propose a method for analyzing Berry phase for a multi-qubit system of superconducting charge qubits interacting with a microwave field. By suitably choosing the system parameters and precisely controlling the dynamics, novel connection found between the Berry phase and entanglement creations.
Quantum algorithms often benefit from the ability to execute multi-qubit (>2) gates. To date such multi-qubit gates are typically decomposed into single- and two-qubit gates, particularly in superconducting qubit architectures. The ability to perform multi-qubit operations in a single step could vastly improve the fidelity and execution time of many algorithms. Here, we propose a single shot method for executing an i-Toffoli gate, a three-qubit gate gate with two control and one target qubit, using currently existing superconducting hardware. We show numerical evidence for a process fidelity o…
The computer simulations of the process of single pulse readout from the flux-biased phase qubit is performed in the frame of one-dimensional Schroedinger equation. It has been demonstrated that the readout error can be minimized by choosing the optimal pulse duration and the depth of a potential well, leading to the fidelity of 0.94 for 2ns and 0.965 for 12ns sinusoidal pulses.
We introduce a protocol capable of generating a general measurement operator for a mechanical resonator. The technique requires a qubit-resonator interaction and uses a coherent pulse to drive qubit transitions. This is followed by projective measurement of the qubit's energy, constraining the resonator in a state that depends on the pulse shape. The freedom to choose a pulse shape for the coherent drive enables an arbitrary position-basis measurement operator. Using this measurement operator, we outline a two pulse protocol that probabilistically generates a pure mechanical state with a desir…
We propose how to realize a three-step controlled-phase gate of one superconducting qubit simultaneously controlling n qubits selected from N qubits in a cavity (1<n<N). The operation time of this gate is independent of the number n of qubits involved in the gate operation. This phase gate controlling at once n qubits is insensitive to the initial state of the cavity mode and can be used to produce an analogous CNOT gate simultaneously acting on n qubits.
Quantum Zeno effect is a significant tool in quantum manipulating and computing. We propose its observation in superconducting phase qubit with two experimentally feasible measurement schemes. The conventional measurement method is used to achieve the proposed pulse and continuous readout of the qubit state, which are analyzed by projection assumption and Monte Carlo wave-function simulation, respectively. Our scheme gives a direct implementation of quantum Zeno effect in a superconducting phase qubit.
We describe the coherent manipulation of harmonic oscillator and qubit modes using resonant trains of single flux quantum pulses in place of microwaves. We show that coherent rotations are obtained for pulse-to-pulse spacing equal to the period of the oscillator. We consider a protocol for preparing bright and dark harmonic oscillator pointer states. Next we analyze rotations of a two-state qubit system. We calculate gate errors due to timing jitter of the single flux quantum pulses and due to weak anharmonicity of the qubit. We show that gate fidelities in excess of 99.9% are achievable for s…
In this paper we propose a scheme to implement a quantum teleportation based on the current experimental design [Nature (London) 431, 162 (2004); ibid 445, 515 (2007)] in which superconducting charge qubits are capacitively coupled to a single high-Q superconducting coplanar resonator. As advantage of this architecture, it permits the use of multiqubit gates between non-nearest qubits and the realization of parallel gates. We consider the case of two qubits inside the resonator, where the teleportation is accomplished.
Superconducting quantum systems are promising candidates for quantum information processing due to their scalability and design flexibility. However, the existence of defects, fluctuations, and inaccuracies is unavoidable for practical superconducting quantum circuits. In this paper, a sampling-based learning control (SLC) method is used to guide the design of control fields for manipulating superconducting quantum systems. Numerical results for one-qubit systems and coupled two-qubit systems show that the "smart" fields learned using the SLC method can achieve robust manipulation of supercond…
Superconducting quantum circuit is a promising system for building quantum computer. With this system we demonstrate the universal quantum computations, including the preparing of initial states, the single-qubit operations, the two-qubit universal gate operations between arbitrary qubits, the multiple pairs of two-qubit gate operations in parallel, the coupling operations on a group of qubits in parallel, the coupling operations on multiple groups of qubits in parallel, the coupling operations on multiple pairs and multiple groups of qubits in parallel. Within available technology, a universa…
The hardware overhead associated with microwave control is a major obstacle to scale-up of superconducting quantum computing. An alternative approach involves irradiation of the qubits with trains of Single Flux Quantum (SFQ) pulses, pulses of voltage whose time integral is precisely equal to the superconducting flux quantum. Here we describe the derivation and validation of compact SFQ pulse sequences in which classical bits are clocked to the qubit at a frequency that is roughly a factor 5 higher than the qubit oscillation frequency, allowing for variable pulse-to-pulse timing. The control s…
Coherent pulse control for quantum memory is viable in the optical domain but nascent in microwave quantum circuits. We show how to realize coherent storage and on-demand pulse retrieval entirely within a superconducting circuit by exploiting and extending existing electromagnetically induced transparency technology in superconducting quantum circuits. Our scheme employs a linear array of superconducting artificial atoms coupled to a microwave transmission line.
In this paper, we propose a scheme to implement two-qubit logic gates with a controllable and selective interaction in a scalable superconducting circuit of charge qubits. A nanomechanical resonator is used as a data bus to connect qubits. It is indicated that a controllable interaction between qubits can be obtained by making use of the data bus. It is shown that a selective interaction between qubits can be realized when many qubits are involved in the system under our consideration.
Superconducting qubits are sensitive to a variety of loss mechanisms including dielectric loss from interfaces. By changing the physical footprint of the qubit it is possible to modulate sensitivity to surface loss. Here we show a systematic study of planar superconducting transmons of differing physical footprints to optimize the qubit design for maximum coherence. We find that qubits with small footprints are limited by surface loss and that qubits with large footprints are limited by other loss mechanisms which are currently not understood.
Control the qubit-qubit coupling with double superconducting resonators
Tokyo University of Science（东京科学大学）；RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing (RQC)（理化学研究所量子计算中心）；Fujitsu Limited（富士通有限公司）；National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University（国立阳明交通大学）；National Tsing Hua University（国立清华大学）
We present a way to realize quantum information transfer with superconducting flux qubits coupled to a cavity. Because only resonant qubit-cavity interaction and resonant qubit-pulse interaction are applied, the information transfer can be performed much faster, when compared with the previous proposals. This proposal does not require adjustment of the qubit level spacings during the operation. Moreover, neither uniformity in the device parameters nor exact placement of qubits in the cavity is needed by this proposal.
We propose a selective dynamical decoupling scheme on a chain of permanently coupled qubits with XX type interactions, which is capable of dynamically suppressing any coupling in the chain by applying sequences of local pulses to the individual qubits. We demonstrate that high-fidelity single- and two-qubit gates can be achieved by this procedure and that sequences of gates can be implemented by this pulse control alone. We discuss the applicability and physical limitations of our model specifically for strongly coupled superconducting flux qubits. Since dynamically modifying the couplings bet…
We investigate how to protect quantum correlations for two qubits each locally interacting with its own non-Markovian environment by making use of bang-bang pulses. It is shown that the quantum discord dynamics presents the phenomenon of sudden change for some certain initial states. We also find that the amount of quantum correlation between two qubits can be improved by applying a train of pulses and protected more effectively with shorter interval pulses or longer reservoir correlation time.
We have investigated the dynamics of entanglement between two spin-1/2 qubits that are subject to independent kick and Gaussian pulse type external magnetic fields analytically as well as numerically. Dyson time ordering effect on the dynamics is found to be important for the sequence of kicks. We show that "almost-steady" high entanglement can be created between two initially unentangled qubits by using carefully designed kick or pulse sequences.
A system consisting of two qubits and a resonator is considered in the presence of different sources of noise, bringing to light the possibility for making the two qubits evolve in a synchronized way. A direct qubit-qubit interaction turns out to be a crucial ingredient as well as dissipation processes involving the resonator. The detrimental role of local dephasing of the qubits is also taken into account.
The rapid development in designs and fabrication techniques of superconducting qubits has helped making coherence times of qubits longer. In the near future, however, the radiative decay of a qubit into its control line will be a fundamental limitation, imposing a trade-off between fast control and long lifetime of the qubit. In this work, we successfully break this trade-off by strongly coupling another superconducting qubit along the control line. This second qubit, which we call a Josephson quantum filter (JQF), prevents the qubit from emitting microwave photons and thus suppresses its rela…
Here, we propose a scheme to generate a controllable Ising interaction between superconducting flux qubits. Existing schemes rely on inducting couplings to realize Ising interactions between flux qubits, and the interaction strength is controlled by an applied magnetic field On the other hand, we have found a way to generate an interaction between the flux qubits via capacitive couplings. This has an advantage in individual addressability, because we can control the interaction strength by changing an applied voltage that can be easily localized. This is a crucial step toward the realizing sup…
A scheme for coupling superconducting charge qubits via a one-dimensional superconducting transmission line resonator is proposed. The qubits are working at their optimal points, where they are immune to the charge noise and possess long decoherence time. Analysis on the dynamical time evolution of the interaction is presented, which is shown to be insensitive to the initial state of the resonator field. This scheme enables fast gate operation and is readily scalable to multiqubit scenario.
We have realized a new interaction between superconducting qubits and a readout cavity that results in the displacement of a coherent state in the cavity, conditioned on the state of the qubit. This conditional state, when it reaches the cavity-following, phase-sensitive amplifier, matches its measured observable, namely the in-phase quadrature. In a setup where several qubits are coupled to the same readout resonator, we show it is possible to measure the state of a target qubit with minimal dephasing of the other qubits. Our results suggest novel directions for faster readout of superconduct…
Conventional superconducting qubits have used Josephson junctions as an essential part to provide anharmonicity for well-separated energy-level spacings. However, because a superconducting ring without Josephson junctions has intrinsically well-separated energy-level spacings, Josephson junctions are not necessary as long as one can achieve single-qubit operations. We show that the orbital angular momentum of light can be adopted as a qubit-control means and can eliminate the need for Josephson junctions. The feasibility study reveals that the proposed qubit has many advantages over the previo…
We present a circuit construction for a new fixed-frequency superconducting qubit and show how it can be scaled up to a grid with strictly local interactions. The circuit QED realization we propose implements $σ_z$-type coupling between a superconducting qubit and any number of $LC$ resonators. The resulting \textit{longitudinal coupling} is inherently different from the usual $σ_x$-type \textit{transverse coupling}, which is the one that has been most commonly used for superconducting qubits. In a grid of fixed-frequency qubits and resonators with a particular pattern of always-on interaction…
Superconducting quantum technologies require qubit systems whose properties meet several often conflicting requirements, such as long coherence times and high anharmonicity. Here, we provide an engineering framework based on a generalized superconducting qubit model in the flux regime, which abstracts multiple circuit design parameters and thereby supports design optimization across multiple qubit properties. We experimentally investigate a special parameter regime which has both high anharmonicity ($\sim\!1$GHz) and long quantum coherence times ($T_1\!=\!40\!-\!80\,\mathrm{μs}$ and $T_\mathrm…
Composite pulses are an efficient tool for robust quantum control. In this work, we derive the form of the composite pulse sequence to implement robust single-qubit gates in a three-level system, where two low-energy levels act as a qubit. The composite pulses can efficiently cancel the systematic errors up to a certain order. We find that the three-pulse sequence cannot completely eliminate the first order of systematic errors, but still availably makes the fidelity resistant to variations in a specific direction. When employing more pulses in the sequence ($N>3$), the fidelity can be insensi…
Measurement for qubits plays a key role in quantum computation. Current methods for classifying states of single qubit in a superconducting multi-qubit system produce fidelities lower than expected due to the existence of crosstalk, especially in case of frequency crowding. Here, We make the digital signal processing (DSP) system used in measurement into a shallow neural network and train it to be an optimal classifier to reduce the impact of crosstalk. The experiment result shows the crosstalk-induced readout error deceased by 100% after a 3-second optimization applied on the 6-qubit supercon…
Topological insulators have inspired the study with various quantum simulators. Exploiting the tunability of the qubit frequency and qubit-qubit coupling, we show that a superconducting qubit chain can simulate various topological band models. When the system is restricted to the single-spin excitation subspace, the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model can be equivalently simulated by alternating the coupling strength between neighboring qubits. The existence of topological edge states in this qubit chain is demonstrated in the quench dynamics after the first qubit is excited. This excitation prop…
Progress in superconducting qubit experiments with greater numbers of qubits or advanced techniques such as feedback requires faster and more accurate state measurement. We have designed a multiplexed measurement system with a bandpass filter that allows fast measurement without increasing environmental damping of the qubits. We use this to demonstrate simultaneous measurement of four qubits on a single superconducting integrated circuit, the fastest of which can be measured to 99.8% accuracy in 140ns. This accuracy and speed is suitable for advanced multi-qubit experiments including surface c…
Superconducting quantum circuits, such as the superconducting phase qubit, have multiple quantum states that can interfere with ideal qubit operation. The use of multiple frequency control pulses, resonant with the energy differences of the multi-state system, is theoretically explored. An analytical method to design such control pulses is developed, using a generalization of the Floquet method to multiple frequency controls. This method is applicable to optimizing the control of both superconducting qubits and qudits, and is found to be in excellent agreement with time-dependent numerical sim…
We demonstrate fast two-qubit gates using a parity-violated superconducting qubit consisting of a capacitively-shunted asymmetric Josephson-junction loop under a finite magnetic flux bias. The second-order nonlinearity manifesting in the qubit enables the interaction with a neighboring single-junction transmon qubit via first-order inter-qubit sideband transitions with Rabi frequencies up to 30~MHz. Simultaneously, the unwanted static longitudinal~(ZZ) interaction is eliminated with ac Stark shifts induced by a continuous microwave drive near-resonant to the sideband transitions. The average f…
We present a way for implementing an n-qubit controlled-rotation gate with three-level superconducting qubit systems in cavity QED. The two logical states of a qubit are represented by the two lowest levels of each system while a higher-energy level is used for the gate implementation. The method operates essentially by preparing a $W$ state conditioned on the states of the control qubits, creating a single photon in the cavity mode, and then performing an arbitrary rotation on the states of the target qubit with assistance of the cavity photon. It is interesting to note that the basic operati…
Quantum adiabatic transfer is widely used in quantum computation and quantum simulation. However, the transfer speed is limited by the quantum adiabatic approximation condition, which hinders its application in quantum systems with a short decoherence time. Here we demonstrate quantum adiabatic state transfers that jump along geodesics in one-qubit and two-qubit superconducting transmons. This approach possesses the advantages of speed, robustness, and high fidelity compared with the usual adiabatic process. Our protocol provides feasible strategies for improving state manipulation and gate op…
The interaction between a superconducting phase qubit and the two-level systems locating inside the Josephson tunnel barrier is shown to be described by the XY model, which is naturally used to implement the iSWAP gate. With this gate, we propose a scheme to efficiently generate genuine multi-qubit entangled states of such two-level systems, including multipartite W state and cluster states. In particularly, we show that, with the help of the phase qubit, the entanglement witness can be used to efficiently detect the produced genuine multi-qubit entangled states. Furthermore, we analyze that t…
We report on the coherence of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states comprised of up to 8 qubits in the IBM ibmqx5 16-qubit quantum processor. In particular, we evaluate the coherence of GHZ states with $N=1,\ldots,8$ qubits, as a function of a delay time between state creation and measurement. We find that the decay in coherence occurs at a rate that is linear in the number of qubits. This is consistent with a model in which the dominant noise affecting the system is uncorrelated across qubits.
In this review, we discuss recent experiments that investigate how the quantum sate of a superconducting qubit evolves during measurement. We provide a pedagogical overview of the measurement process, when the qubit is dispersively coupled to a microwave frequency cavity, and the qubit state is encoded in the phase of a microwave tone that probes the cavity. A continuous measurement record is used to reconstruct the individual quantum trajectories of the qubit state, and quantum state tomography is performed to verify that the state has been tracked accurately. Furthermore, we discuss ensemble…
We present a novel approach for studying the dynamics of a superconducting qubit in a cavity. We succeed in linearizing the Hamiltonian through the application of an appropriate unitary transformation followed by a rotating wave approximation (RWA). For certain values of the parameters involved, we show that it is possible to obtain a a Jaynes-Cummings type Hamiltonian. As an example, we show the existence of super-revivals for the qubit inversion.
