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arXiv:1006.3351 · Physical Review B

Analysis of a tunable coupler for superconducting phase qubits

Ricardo A. Pinto, Alexander N. Korotkov, Michael R. Geller, Vitaly S. Shumeiko, John M. Martinis

Published Sep 28, 2010• 30 citations
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Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the recently realized tunable coupler for superconducting phase qubits [R. C. Bialczak et al., arXiv:1007.2219 (unpublished)]. The coupling can be turned off by compensating a negative mutual inductance with a tunable Josephson inductance. The main coupling in this system is of the $XX$ type and can be zeroed exactly, while there is also a small undesired contribution of the $ZZ$ type. We calculate both couplings as functions of the tuning parameter (bias current) and focus on the residual coupling in the OFF regime. In particular, we show that for typical experimental parameters the coupling OFF/ON ratio is few times ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$, and it may be zeroed by proper choice of parameters. The remaining errors due to physical presence of the coupler are on the order of ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}6}$.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.82.104522

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This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the recently realized tunable coupler for superconducting phase qubits [R. C. Bialczak et al., arXiv:1007.2219 (unpublished)]. The coupling can be turned off by compensating a negative mutual inductance with a tunable Josephson inductance. The main coupling in this system is of the XXXXXX type and can be zeroed exactly, while there is also a small undesired contribution of the ZZZZZZ type. We calculate both couplings as functions of the tuning parameter (bias current) and focus on the residual coupling in the OFF regime. In particular, we show that for typical experimental parameters the coupling OFF/ON ratio is few times 10\ensuremath−3{10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}10\ensuremath−3, and it may be zeroed by proper choice of parameters. The remaining errors due to physical presence of the coupler are on the order of 10\ensuremath−6{10}^{\ensuremath{-}6}10\ensuremath−6.
We study a recently demonstrated design for a high-performance tunable coupler suitable for superconducting Xmon and planar transmon qubits [Y. Chen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 220502 (2014)]. The coupler circuit uses a single flux-biased Josephson junction and acts as a tunable current divider. We calculate the effective qubit-qubit interaction Hamiltonian by treating the nonlinearity of the qubit and coupler junctions perturbatively. We find that the qubit nonlinearity has two principal effects: The first is to suppress the magnitude of the transverse ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{x}\ensuremath{\bigotimes}{\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{x}$ coupling from that obtained in the harmonic approximation by about 15%, assuming typical qubit parameters. The second is to induce a small diagonal ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{z}\ensuremath{\bigotimes}{\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{z}$ coupling. The effects of the coupler junction nonlinearity are negligible in the parameter regime considered. The approach used here can be applied to other complex nonlinear circuits arising in the design of superconducting hardware for quantum information processing.
For a variety of superconducting qubits, tunable interactions are achieved through mutual inductive coupling to a coupler circuit containing a nonlinear Josephson element. In this paper, we derive the general interaction mediated by such a circuit under the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. This interaction naturally decomposes into a classical part, with origin in the classical circuit equations, and a quantum part, associated with the coupler's zero-point energy. Our result is nonperturbative in the qubit-coupler coupling strengths and in the coupler nonlinearity. This can lead to significant departures from previous, linear theories for the interqubit coupling, including nonstoquastic and many-body interactions. Our analysis provides explicit and efficiently computable series for any term in the interaction Hamiltonian and can be applied to any superconducting qubit type. We conclude with a numerical investigation of our theory using a case study of two coupled flux qubits, and in particular study the regime of validity of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation.
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An improved tunable coupling element for building networks of coupled rf-superconducting quantum interference device (rf-SQUID) flux qubits has been experimentally demonstrated. This new form of coupler, based on the compound Josephson-junction rf-SQUID, provides a sign and magnitude tunable mutual inductance between qubits with minimal nonlinear crosstalk from the coupler tuning parameter into the qubits. Quantitative agreement is shown between an effective one-dimensional model of the coupler's potential and measurements of the coupler persistent current and susceptibility.
Controllable interaction between superconducting qubits is desirable for large-scale quantum computation and simulation. Here, based on a theoretical proposal by Yan et al. [Phys. Rev. Appl. 10, 054061 (2018)] we experimentally demonstrate a simply designed and flux-controlled tunable coupler with a continuous tunability by adjusting the coupler frequency, which can completely turn off adjacent superconducting qubit coupling. Utilizing the tunable interaction between two qubits via the coupler, we implement a different type of controlled-phase (cz) gate with ``dynamically decoupled regime,'' which allows the qubit-qubit coupling to be only ``on'' at the usual operating point while dynamically ``off'' during the tuning process of one qubit frequency into and out of the operating point. This scheme not only efficiently suppresses the leakage out of the computational subspace, but also allows for the acquired two-qubit phase being geometric at the operating point. We achieve an average cz gate fidelity of $98.3\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.6\mathrm{%}$, which is dominantly limited by qubit decoherence. The demonstrated tunable coupler provides a desirable tool to suppress adjacent qubit coupling and is suitable for large-scale quantum computation and simulation.