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arXiv:1402.1247 · Physical Review B

Flux qubit noise spectroscopy using Rabi oscillations under strong driving conditions

Fumiki Yoshihara, Yasunobu Nakamura, Fei Yan, Simon Gustavsson, Jonas Bylander, William D. Oliver, Jaw-Shen Tsai

Published Jan 9, 2014• 95 citations
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Abstract

We infer the high-frequency flux noise spectrum in a superconducting flux qubit by studying the decay of Rabi oscillations under strong driving conditions. The large anharmonicity of the qubit and its strong inductive coupling to a microwave line enabled high-amplitude driving without causing significant additional decoherence. Rabi frequencies up to 1.7 GHz were achieved, approaching the qubit's level splitting of 4.8 GHz, a regime where the rotating-wave approximation breaks down as a model for the driven dynamics. The spectral density of flux noise observed in the wide frequency range decreases with increasing frequency up to 300 MHz, where the spectral density is not very far from the extrapolation of the $1/f$ spectrum obtained from the free-induction-decay measurements. We discuss a possible origin of the flux noise due to surface electron spins.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.89.020503

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We infer the high-frequency flux noise spectrum in a superconducting flux qubit by studying the decay of Rabi oscillations under strong driving conditions. The large anharmonicity of the qubit and its strong inductive coupling to a microwave line enabled high-amplitude driving without causing significant additional decoherence. Rabi frequencies up to 1.7 GHz were achieved, approaching the qubit's level splitting of 4.8 GHz, a regime where the rotating-wave approximation breaks down as a model for the driven dynamics. The spectral density of flux noise observed in the wide frequency range decreases with increasing frequency up to 300 MHz, where the spectral density is not very far from the extrapolation of the 1/f1/f1/f spectrum obtained from the free-induction-decay measurements. We discuss a possible origin of the flux noise due to surface electron spins.
We have investigated the driven dynamics of a superconducting flux qubit that is tunably coupled to a microwave resonator. We find that the qubit experiences an oscillating field mediated by off-resonant driving of the resonator, leading to strong modifications of the qubit Rabi frequency. This opens an additional noise channel, and we find that low-frequency noise in the coupling parameter causes a reduction of the coherence time during driven evolution. The noise can be mitigated with the rotary-echo pulse sequence, which, for driven systems, is analogous to the Hahn-echo sequence.
It is well known that that superconducting qubits based on Josephson junctions have the advantages of scalability and the qubit states are easy to prepare and control. In addition, demonstration of Rabi oscillations in various superconducting circuits shows that superconducting qubits are promising for scalable quantum information processing. However, despite flexibility of design and fabrication, easier to scale up, and fast gate speed, superconducting qubits usually have much shorter decoherence time than trapped ions, NMR etc. due to the relatively strong interactions between qubits and environment. Recent experiments show that low frequency flux noise is the dominant mechanism of decoherence in superconducting flux qubits. However, despite extensive effort the origin of flux noise is still not well understood. The goal of this work is to identify the source and characterize the property of flux noisein rf SQUID flux qubit through various spectroscopy and time-resolved measurements. Our result show that one can determine all circuit parameters needed for reconstructing qubit Hamiltonian with high accuracy via measurement of macroscopic resonant tunneling (MRT) and photon assisted tunneling (PAT) and that the amount of flux noise in rf SQUID qubits scales linearly with self inductance of the qubits. In addition, we have investigated the dynamics of a three-level flux qubit in incoherent regime. The result demonstrates that treating a multi-level physical qubit, such as the superconducting flux qubit, as an ideal two-level quantum system may be inadequate under certain circumstances.
Continuous spectroscopic measurements of a strongly driven superconducting qubit by means of a high-quality tank circuit (a linear detector) are under study. Output functions of the detector---namely, a spectrum of voltage fluctuations and an impedance---are expressed in terms of the qubit spectrum and magnetic susceptibility. The nonequilibrium spectrum of the current fluctuations in the qubit loop and the linear response function of the driven qubit coupled to a heat bath are calculated with Bloch-Redfield and rotating-wave approximations. Back-action effects of the qubit on the tank and the tank on the qubit are analyzed quantitatively. We show that the voltage spectrum of the tank provides detailed information about the frequency and decay rate of Rabi oscillations in the qubit. It is found that both an efficiency of spectroscopic measurement and measurement-induced decoherence of the qubit demonstrate a resonant behavior as the Rabi frequency approaches the resonant frequency of the tank. We determine conditions when the spectroscopic observation of the Rabi oscillations in the flux qubit with the tank circuit can be considered as a weak continuous quantum measurement.
We present theoretical transmission spectra of a strongly driven, damped flux qubit coupled to a dissipative resonator in the ultrastrong-coupling regime. Such a qubit-oscillator system, described within a dissipative Rabi model, constitutes the building block of superconducting circuit QED platforms. The addition of a strong drive allows one to characterize the system properties and study novel phenomena, leading to a better understanding and control of the qubit-oscillator system. In this work, the calculated transmission of a weak probe field quantifies the response of the qubit, in frequency domain, under the influence of the quantized resonator and of the strong microwave drive. We find distinctive features of the entangled driven qubit-resonator spectrum, namely resonant features and avoided crossings, modified by the presence of the dissipative environment. The magnitude, positions, and broadening of these features are determined by the interplay among qubit-oscillator detuning, the strength of their coupling, the driving amplitude, and the interaction with the heat bath. This work establishes the theoretical basis for future experiments in the driven ultrastrong-coupling regime.
This thesis discusses a series of experimental and theoretical studies on fast control and decoherence in superconducting quantum circuits. These two subjects are complementary aspects of the problem of improving the gate fidelities in quantum information processing devices based on superconducting circuits. \n \nIn the first part of this thesis, we present experiments on fast control of a superconducting flux qubit using strong driving. We explore driving with short pulses and a driving strength significantly exceeding the transition frequency. The observed dynamics is described in terms of quasienergies and quasienergy states, in agreement with Floquet theory. We observe the role of pulse shaping in the dynamics, as determined by non-adiabatic transitions between Floquet states. In addition, based on adiabatic perturbation theory in the Floquet picture, we propose a control scheme for fast and high-fidelity single-qubit operations with strong driving. These results pave the way to quantum control with a fidelity beyond the threshold of fault-tolerant quantum computation. \n \nIn the second part of this thesis, we discuss experimental methods and present the characterization of decoherence in superconducting resonators and superconducting qubits. Firstly, we present an analysis method on the measurements of photon loss in superconducting resonators. We use this method to characterize the microwave loss of aluminum oxide, an important material in superconducting circuits. The power and temperature dependence of the measured loss is consistent with loss due to two-level defects in amorphous materials. Secondly, we present experimental results on decoherence and noise spectroscopy of a superconducting flux qubit. Using the qubit as a noise spectrometer, we perform detailed measurements on the power spectral density of the flux noise in superconducting circuits over a wide range of frequencies, from 10^-3 to 10^8 Hz, and over a temperature range from 35 to 130 mK. We also present measurements of frequency and temperature dependence of the qubit energy relaxation.
We report a direct measurement of the low-frequency noise spectrum in a superconducting flux qubit. Our method uses the noise sensitivity of a free-induction Ramsey interference experiment, comprising free evolution in the presence of noise for a fixed period of time followed by single-shot qubit-state measurement. Repeating this procedure enables Fourier-transform noise spectroscopy with access to frequencies up to the achievable repetition rate, a regime relevant to dephasing in ensemble-averaged time-domain measurements such as Ramsey interferometry. Rotating the qubit's quantization axis allows us to measure two types of noise: effective flux noise and effective critical-current or charge noise. For both noise sources, we observe that the very same 1/f1/f1/f-type power laws measured at considerably higher frequencies ($0.2\ensuremath{-}20$ MHz) are consistent with the noise in the $0.01\ensuremath{-}100$-Hz range measured here. We find no evidence of temperature dependence of the noises over $65\ensuremath{-}200$ mK, and also no evidence of time-domain correlations between the two noises. These methods and results are pertinent to the dephasing of all superconducting qubits.