We present a circuit construction for a 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 ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{z}$ type coupling between a superconducting qubit and any number of $LC$ resonators. The resulting longitudinal coupling is inherently different from the usual ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{x}$ type 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 interactions, coupling is strictly confined to nearest and next-nearest neighbor resonators; there is never any direct qubit-qubit coupling. We note that just a single unique qubit frequency suffices for the scalability of this scheme. The same is true for the resonators, if the resonator-resonator coupling constants are varied instead. A controlled phase gate between two neighboring qubits can be realized with microwave drives on the qubits, without affecting the other qubits. This fact is a significant advantage for the scalability of this scheme.
We present a circuit construction for a 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 \ensuremathσz type coupling between a superconducting qubit and any number of LC resonators. The resulting longitudinal coupling is inherently different from the usual \ensuremathσx type 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 interactions, coupling is strictly confined to nearest and next-nearest neighbor resonators; there is never any direct qubit-qubit coupling. We note that just a single unique qubit frequency suffices for the scalability of this scheme. The same is true for the resonators, if the resonator-resonator coupling constants are varied instead. A controlled phase gate between two neighboring qubits can be realized with microwave drives on the qubits, without affecting the other qubits. This fact is a significant advantage for the scalability of this scheme.
Superconducting qubits are among the most promising and versatile building blocks on the road to a functioning quantum computer. One of the main challenges in superconducting qubit architectures is to couple qubits in a well-controlled manner, especially in circuit constructions that involve many qubits. In order to avoid unwanted cross-couplings, qubits are oftentimes coupled via harmonic resonators, which act as buses that mediate the interaction. This thesis is set in the framework of superconducting transmon-type qubit architectures with special focus on two important types of coupling between qubits and harmonic resonators: transverse and longitudinal coupling. While transverse coupling naturally appears in transmon-like circuit constructions, longitudinal coupling is much harder to implement and hardly ever the only coupling term present. Nevertheless, we will see that longitudinal coupling offers some remarkable advantages with respect to scalability and readout. This thesis will focus on a design, which combines both these coupling types in a single circuit and provides the possibility to choose between pure transverse and pure longitudinal or have both at the same time. The ability to choose between transverse and longitudinal coupling in the same circuit provides the flexibility to use one for coupling to the next qubit and one for readout, or vice versa. We will start with an introduction to circuit quantization, where we will explain how to describe and analyze superconducting electrical circuits in a systematic way and discuss which characteristic circuit elements make up qubits and resonators. We will then introduce the two types of coupling between qubit and resonator which are provided in our design: transverse and longitudinal coupling. In order to show that longitudinal coupling has some remarkable advantages with respect to the scalability of a circuit, we will discuss a scalable qubit architecture, which can be implemented with our design. Translating this discussion from the Hamiltonian level to the language of circuit quantization, we will show how to design circuits with specifically tailored couplings. Having introduced these basic concepts, we will focus on our circuit design that consists of an inductively shunted transmon qubit with tunable coupling to an embedded harmonic mode. Using a symmetric design, static transverse coupling terms are canceled out, while the parity of the only remaining coupling term can be tuned via an external flux. The distinctive feature of the tunable design is that the transverse coupling disappears when the longitudinal is maximal and vice versa. Subsequently, we will turn to the implementation of our circuit design, discuss how to choose the parameters, and present an adapted alternative circuit, where coupling strength and anharmonicity scale better than in the original circuit. Furthermore, we show how the anharmonicity and the coupling can be boosted by additional flux-biasing. We will see that for conveniently chosen parameters longitudinal and transverse coupling have comparable values, while all other coupling terms can be suppressed. In addition, we present a proposal for an experimental device that will serve as a prototype for a first experiment. Coming back to the scalable architecture mentioned above, we will show how our design can be scaled up to a grid, which can be done in modular fashion with strictly local couplings. In such a grid of fixed-frequency qubits and resonators with a particular pattern of always-on interactions, coupling is strictly confined to nearest and next-nearest neighbor resonators; there is never any direct qubit-qubit coupling. We will conclude the thesis discussing different possibilities to do readout with our circuit design, including a short discussion of the coupling between the circuit and the environment, and the influence of dissipation.
We present the design of an inductively shunted transmon qubit with flux-tunable coupling to an embedded harmonic mode. This circuit construction offers the possibility to flux-choose between pure transverse and pure longitudinal coupling, that is, coupling to the ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{x}$ or ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{z}$ degree of freedom of the qubit. While transverse coupling is the coupling type that is most commonly used for superconducting qubits, the inherently different longitudinal coupling has some remarkable advantages both for readout and for the scalability of a circuit. Being able to choose between both kinds of coupling in the same circuit provides the flexibility to use one for coupling to the next qubit and one for readout, or vice versa. We provide a detailed analysis of the system's behavior using realistic parameters, along with a proposal for the physical implementation of a prototype device.
One of the key elements in circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) is the superconducting microwave resonator, which can enable strong coupling to and between nanoscale quantum systems, and as a result has emerged as an essential tool for both quantum information and quantum sensing. In this thesis, I will discuss new applications of superconducting resonators in both of these fields, which illustrates how quantum information and quantum sensing can be strongly tied together. As the field of quantum information continues to grow, various platforms for realizing a quantum computer have been proposed. One attractive platform is to control and manipulate the spin of an electron to form spin qubits, which have demonstrated a long coherence time, weak coupling to the environment, and high fidelity single- and two-qubit gates. However, scaling beyond two qubits has proven challenging, as has incorporating long-range coupling, although both are crucial for making spin qubits a scalable quantum computing platform. The confinement of electromagnetic fields in superconducting resonators enables strong coupling to small systems, such as the single electrons of a spin qubit. In the first part of this thesis, I will describe how a singlet-triplet spin qubit coupled to a high-impedance superconducting resonator constitutes a promising architecture for mediating long-ranged interactions based on a longitudinal coupling between the resonator and qubit. I will discuss the technical developments needed to successfully implement this novel type of interaction in a hybrid spin qubit-resonator device. This type of interaction has several advantages over the more commonly studied transverse coupling scheme: it does not require careful tuning of the qubit frequency to match that of the resonator, which facilitates scaling to a large number of qubits, and also avoids the loss of coherence, which is inevitable in resonant coupling. This type of interaction therefore opens promising paths for generating high-fidelity long-ranged two-qubit coupling by employing superconducting microwave resonators. By adapting techniques used in quantum information, we have also developed a new technique in quantum sensing, where we employ superconducting resonators as a probe of quantum materials such as mesoscopic systems, two-dimensional materials, and heterostructures, which are otherwise challenging to experimentally access with conventional techniques. In the second part of my thesis, I will discuss how implementing cQED techniques from quantum information allows us to probe the symmetry of the order parameter in unconventional superconductors. Unconventional superconductors are not readily available, and we therefore study an engineered system that comprises of interfacing a ferromagnet and superconductor, in which unconventional pairing can be induced into the ferromagnet. This platform allows us to simultaneously excite spin waves, a collective excitation of spins, in the ferromagnet, which opens new directions for studying interactions between coherently coupled magnons (quanta of spin waves) and unconventional superconducting states. Finally, by applying the same technique to a two-dimensional (2D) superconductor, tungsten ditelluride, we leverage this platform in an attempt to study the order parameter of its intrinsic superconducting phase. The nature of the order parameter in this material remains an open question, as both topological and superconducting phases can exist, possibly simultaneously. This work thus demonstrates a unique use of superconducting resonators beyond quantum information applications.
Generating high-fidelity, tunable entanglement between qubits is crucial for realizing gate-based quantum computation. In superconducting circuits, tunable interactions are often implemented using flux-tunable qubits or coupling elements, adding control complexity and noise sources. Here, we realize a tunable ZZ interaction between two transmon qubits with fixed frequencies and fixed coupling, induced by driving both transmons off-resonantly. We show tunable coupling over one order of magnitude larger than the static coupling, and change the sign of the interaction, enabling cancellation of the idle coupling. Further, this interaction is amenable to large quantum processors: the drive frequency can be flexibly chosen to avoid spurious transitions, and because both transmons are driven, it is resilient to microwave crosstalk. We apply this interaction to implement a controlled phase (CZ) gate with a gate fidelity of 99.43(1)% as measured by cycle benchmarking, and we find the fidelity is limited by incoherent errors.
We discuss different ways of generating entanglement in the original picture of circuit QED (XcQED) and several restrictions that arise in the context of a large-scale quantum architecture. To alleviate some of the issues posed by the presence of the nonlinearities inherent to these systems, we introduce a layout for circuit QED, wherein an artificial atom is coupled to a quantized radiation field via its longitudinal degree of freedom (ZcQED). This system is akin to ion traps used in atomic physics, but it relies on fixed coupling between the atom and the resonator. We describe a scalable architecture for processing quantum information with superconducting qubits, which is free from any type of residual interaction between the atomic and photonic degrees of freedom. Tunable interactions can be realized based on sideband transitions, and the system can be operated out of the Lamb-Dicke regime, allowing it to benefit from the possibility of achieving large coupling strengths between atoms and resonators. We also discuss a readout scheme that does not require any extra circuits and allows a qubit-specific measurement of the state of the quantum register inspired by the electron shelving technique. This scheme is quantum nondemolition (QND)-like, and allows for single-shot determination of the qubit states.
Multi-qubit parity measurements are at the core of many quantum error correction schemes. Extracting multi-qubit parity information typically involves using a sequence of multiple two-qubit gates. In this paper, we propose a superconducting circuit device with native support for multi-qubit parity-controlled gates (PCG). These are gates that perform rotations on a parity ancilla based on the multi-qubit parity operator of adjacent qubits, and can be directly used to perform multi-qubit parity measurements. The circuit consists of a set of concatenated Josephson ring modulators and effectively realizes a set of transmon-like qubits with strong longitudinal nearest-neighbor couplings. PCGs are implemented by applying microwave drives to the parity ancilla at specific frequencies. We investigate the scheme's performance with numerical simulation using realistic parameter choices and decoherence rates, and find that the device can perform four-qubit PCGs in 30 ns with process fidelity surpassing 99%. Furthermore, we study the effects of parameter disorder and spurious coupling between next-nearest neighboring qubits. Our results indicate that this approach to realizing PCGs constitute an interesting candidate for near-term quantum error correction experiments.