We present a hybrid system consisting of a superconducting coplanar waveguide resonator coupled to a nanomechanical string and a transmon qubit acting as a nonlinear circuit element. We perform spectroscopy for both the transmon qubit and the nanomechanical string. Measuring the ac-Stark shift on the transmon qubit and the electromechanically induced absorption on the string allows us to determine the average photon number in the microwave resonator in both the low and high power regimes. In this way, we measure photon numbers that are up to nine orders of magnitude apart. We find a quantitative agreement between the calibrations of photon numbers in the microwave resonator using the two methods. Our experiments demonstrate the combination of superconducting circuit quantum electrodynamics and nano-electromechanics on a single chip.
We present a hybrid system consisting of a superconducting coplanar waveguide resonator coupled to a nanomechanical string and a transmon qubit acting as a nonlinear circuit element. We perform spectroscopy for both the transmon qubit and the nanomechanical string. Measuring the ac-Stark shift on the transmon qubit and the electromechanically induced absorption on the string allows us to determine the average photon number in the microwave resonator in both the low and high power regimes. In this way, we measure photon numbers that are up to nine orders of magnitude apart. We find a quantitative agreement between the calibrations of photon numbers in the microwave resonator using the two methods. Our experiments demonstrate the combination of superconducting circuit quantum electrodynamics and nano-electromechanics on a single chip.
Experiments to probe the basic quantum properties of motional degrees of freedom of mechanical systems have developed rapidly over the last decade. One promising approach is to use hybrid electromechanical systems incorporating superconducting qubits and microwave circuitry. However, a critical challenge facing the development of these systems is to achieve strong coupling between mechanics and qubits while simultaneously reducing coupling of both the qubit and mechanical mode to the environment. Here we report measurements of a qubit-coupled mechanical resonator system consisting of an ultra-high-frequency nanoresonator and a long coherence-time superconducting transmon qubit, embedded in a superconducting coplanar waveguide cavity. It is demonstrated that the nanoresonator and transmon have commensurate energies and transmon coherence times are one order of magnitude larger than for all previously reported qubit-coupled nanoresonators. Moreover, we show that numerical simulations of this new hybrid quantum system are in good agreement with spectroscopic measurements and suggest that the nanoresonator in our device resides at low thermal occupation number, near its ground state, acting as a dissipative bath seen by the qubit. We also outline how this system could soon be developed as a platform for implementing more advanced experiments with direct relevance to quantum information processing and quantum thermodynamics, including the study of nanoresonator quantum noise properties, reservoir engineering, and nanomechanical quantum state generation and detection.
The high critical magnetic field and relatively high critical temperature of niobium nitride (NbN) make it a promising material for applications in superconducting quantum technology. However, NbN-based superconducting circuits are sensitive to decoherence sources such as two-level system (TLS) defects. Here, we numerically and experimentally investigate NbN superconducting microwave coplanar waveguide resonator arrays with a 100 nm thickness, capacitively coupled to a common coplanar waveguide on a silicon chip. We observe that the resonators' internal quality factor (Qi) decreases fromQi∼1.07×106in a high power regime toQi∼1.36×105in the single photon regime. Data from this study is consistent with the TLS theory, which describes the TLS interactions in resonator substrates and interfaces. Moreover, we study the temperature (T) dependence ofQiand resonance frequencyfrof coplanar waveguide resonators to characterize the quasiparticle density. We observe that the increase in kinetic inductance at higher temperatures is the main reason for the frequency shift. Finally, we measurefrandQiin response to in-plane magnetic fields (B∣∣). We verify thatQistays well above104up toB∣∣= 240 mT in the photon number<nph>= 1.8 atT= 100 mK. Our results could enable the development of robust microwave superconducting circuits for circuit quantum electrodynamics at high magnetic fields required for hybrid superconducting-semiconducting quantum circuits.
Circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED), exemplified by a coupled system of a superconducting qubit and a microwave cavity, is a powerful framework for the quantum control and measurement of macroscopic quantum states in solid-state circuits. Quantum circuits based on superconducting qubits have emerged as one of the leading platforms in the pursuit of fault-tolerant quantum computing. Despite significant progress in extending qubit lifetimes, refining experimental protocols, and scaling up quantum processors, errors arising from the control and measurement of superconducting qubits continue to hinder the realization of a universal quantum computer. To investigate the error mechanisms for state-of-the-art qubits, we realize long-lived superconducting transmon qubits that exhibit fluctuating lifetimes, with an average of 0.2 ms and a maximum exceeding 0.4 ms. We then investigate their dominant error mechanism. By introducing novel time-resolved error measurements that are synchronized with the operation of the pulse tube cooler in a dilution refrigerator, we find that mechanical vibrations from the pulse tube induce nonequilibrium dynamics in highly coherent qubits, leading to their correlated bit-flip errors. Our findings not only deepen our understanding of qubit error mechanisms but also provide valuable insights into potential error-mitigation strategies for achieving fault tolerance by decoupling superconducting qubits from their mechanical environments. We also present a novel scheme for operating a cQED system in a regime where the cavity is largely displaced. We find that a qubit drive at the bare cavity frequency can effectively displace the cavity field while minimizing the cavity-drive-induced dephasing and the ac Stark shift. Furthermore, we demonstrate that standard cQED protocols, such as qubit control, readout, and cavity single-photon generation, remain compatible with largely displaced cavity fields, even beyond the critical photon number. These findings open new pathways for exploring cQED dynamics in large-photon-number regimes, including the study of nonlinear phenomena in microwave cavities, the saturation of two-level system baths for extending the coherence of microwave quantum states, and the acceleration of the dispersive readout. Finally, mechanical resonators have emerged as integral components in quantum computing for storing and transducing quantum information. Low-frequency mechanical resonators, with extremely low energy dissipation rates, are particularly interesting for extending the lifetimes of stored quantum information. However, integrating low-frequency mechanical resonators with qubits is challenging because their small energy gaps make coherent energy exchange and ground-state preparation difficult. In this thesis, we report the first steps towards the characterization of a hybrid quantum device, consisting of a Transmon qubit and a circuit optomechanical system, both coupled to a 3D microwave cavity.
This thesis describes the development of a hybrid quantum electromechanical system. In this system the mechanical resonator is capacitively coupled to a superconducting transmon which is embedded in a superconducting coplanar waveguide (CPW) cavity. The difficulty of achieving high quality of superconducting qubit in a high-quality voltage-biased cavity is overcome by integrating a superconducting reflective T-filter to the cavity. Further spectroscopic and pulsed measurements of the hybrid system demonstrate interactions between the ultra-high frequency mechanical resonator and transmon qubit. The noise of mechanical resonator close to ground state is measured by looking at the spectroscopy of the transmon. At last, fabrication and tests of membrane resonators are discussed.
We propose a hybrid system with quantum mechanical three-body interactions between photons, phonons, and qubit excitations. These interactions take place in a circuit quantum electrodynamical architecture with a superconducting microwave resonator coupled to a transmon qubit whose shunt capacitance is free to mechanically oscillate. We show that this system design features a three-mode polariton-mechanical mode and a nonlinear transmon-mechanical mode interaction in the strong coupling regime. Together with the strong resonator-transmon interaction, these properties provide intriguing opportunities for manipulations of this hybrid quantum system. We show, in particular, the feasibility of cooling the mechanical motion down to its ground state and preparing various nonclassical states including mechanical Fock and cat states and hybrid tripartite entangled states.
We theoretically study the transmission properties and the PT -symmetry in a hybrid quantum electromechanical system consisting of a coplanar-waveguide (CPW) microwave cavity, a nanomechanical resonator (NAMR) and a superconducting transmon qubit, where the qubit works in the large detuning condition with both the CPW microwave cavity and the NAMR. By adjusting the NAMR-qubit coupling, we find that the transmissivity and the phase shift of the input field passing through the system can be tuned effectively. We also find that the effective electromechanical coupling can be greatly enhanced by adjusting the NAMR-qubit coupling. Furthermore, with the effective electromechanical coupling, we can realize the transition from the broken PT -symmetry phase to the unbroken PT -symmetry phase when both the cavity loss and the mechanical gain are considered. This work presents an effective way to manipulate the propagation characteristics and to study the PT -symmetry in a hybrid quantum electromechanical system.