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arXiv:2010.09959 · Physical Review Letters

Engineering Purely Nonlinear Coupling between Superconducting Qubits Using a Quarton

Yufeng Ye, Kaidong Peng, Mahdi Naghiloo, Gregory Cunningham, Kevin P. O’Brien

Published Jul 29, 2021• 32 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Strong nonlinear coupling of superconducting qubits and/or photons is a critical building block for quantum information processing. Because of the perturbative nature of the Josephson nonlinearity, linear coupling is often used in the dispersive regime to approximate nonlinear coupling. However, this dispersive coupling is weak and the underlying linear coupling mixes the local modes, which, for example, distributes unwanted self-Kerr nonlinearity to photon modes. Here, we use the quarton to yield purely nonlinear coupling between two linearly decoupled transmon qubits. The quarton's zero ϕ^{2} potential enables an ultrastrong gigahertz-level cross-Kerr coupling, which is an order of magnitude stronger compared to existing schemes, and the quarton's positive ϕ^{4} potential can cancel the negative self-Kerr nonlinearity of qubits to linearize them into resonators. This ultrastrong cross-Kerr coupling between bare modes of qubit-qubit, qubit-photon, and even photon-photon is ideal for applications such as single microwave photon detection, ultrafast two-qubit gates, and readout.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.127.050502

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Strong nonlinear coupling of superconducting qubits and/or photons is a critical building block for quantum information processing. Because of the perturbative nature of the Josephson nonlinearity, linear coupling is often used in the dispersive regime to approximate nonlinear coupling. However, this dispersive coupling is weak and the underlying linear coupling mixes the local modes, which, for example, distributes unwanted self-Kerr nonlinearity to photon modes. Here, we use the quarton to yield purely nonlinear coupling between two linearly decoupled transmon qubits. The quarton's zero ϕ^{2} potential enables an ultrastrong gigahertz-level cross-Kerr coupling, which is an order of magnitude stronger compared to existing schemes, and the quarton's positive ϕ^{4} potential can cancel the negative self-Kerr nonlinearity of qubits to linearize them into resonators. This ultrastrong cross-Kerr coupling between bare modes of qubit-qubit, qubit-photon, and even photon-photon is ideal for applications such as single microwave photon detection, ultrafast two-qubit gates, and readout.
Fast, high-fidelity, and quantum nondemolition (QND) qubit readout is an essential element of quantum information processing. For superconducting qubits, state-of-the-art readout is based on a dispersive cross-Kerr coupling between a qubit and its readout resonator. The resulting readout can be high fidelity and QND, but readout times are currently limited to the order of 50 nanoseconds due to the dispersive cross-Kerr of magnitude 10 megahertz. Here, we present a readout scheme that uses the quarton coupler to facilitate a large (greater than 200 megahertz) cross-Kerr between a transmon qubit and its readout resonator. Full master equation simulations of the coupled system show a 5-nanosecond readout time with greater than 99% readout fidelity and greater than 99.9% QND fidelity. The quartonic readout circuit is experimentally feasible and preserves the coherence properties of the qubit. Our work reveals a path for order of magnitude improvements of superconducting qubit readout by engineering nonlinear light-matter couplings in parameter regimes unreachable by existing designs.
Light-matter interaction between an atom and an electromagnetic resonator is ubiquitous in quantum technologies. Although linear light-matter coupling gσ^x(a^+a^†)g{\hat{\sigma }}_{x}(\hat{a}+{\hat{a}}^{{{\dagger}} })gσ^x​(a^+a^†) can reach the ultrastrong regime g/ω > 10−1, nonlinear light-matter coupling χ2σ^za^†a^\frac{\chi }{2}{\hat{\sigma }}_{z}{\hat{a}}^{{{\dagger}} }\hat{a}2χ​σ^z​a^†a^ is typically perturbative and limited to χ/ω < 10−2. Nonlinear coupling has the advantage of commuting with the atomic σ^z{\hat{\sigma }}_{z}σ^z​ and photonic a^†a^{\hat{a}}^{{{\dagger}} }\hat{a}a^†a^ Hamiltonian, allowing for fundamental operations such as quantum-non-demolition measurement. Here, we use a superconducting circuit to demonstrate the experimental realization of near-ultrastrong χ/ω = (4.852 ± 0.006) × 10−2. We also show signatures of light-light nonlinear coupling ( χa^†a^b^†b^\chi {\hat{a}}^{{{\dagger}} }\hat{a}{\hat{b}}^{{{\dagger}} }\hat{b}χa^†a^b^†b^ ) and χ/2π = 580.3 ± 0.4 MHz matter-matter nonlinear coupling ( χ4σ^z,aσ^z,b\frac{\chi }{4}{\hat{\sigma }}_{z,a}{\hat{\sigma }}_{z,b}4χ​σ^z,a​σ^z,b​ ), representing the largest reported ZZ interaction between two coherent qubits. Such advances in the nonlinear coupling strength of light, matter modes enable new physical regimes and could lead to orders of magnitude faster qubit readout and gates. Nonlinear light-matter coupling has applications in quantum technologies, for instance in quantum-non-demolition measurements, but its strength is typically limited. Here the authors demonstrate near-ultrastrong nonlinear light-matter coupling in a superconducting circuit with two transmons and a quarton coupler.
The field of superconducting qubits is constantly evolving with new circuit designs. However, when it comes to qubit readout, the use of simple transverse linear coupling remains overwhelmingly prevalent. This standard readout scheme has significant drawbacks: in addition to the Purcell effect, it suffers from a limitation on the maximal number of photons in the readout mode, which restricts the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the Quantum Non-Demolition (QND) nature of the readout. Here, we explore the high-power regime by engineering a nonlinear coupling between a transmon qubit and its readout mode. Our approach builds upon previous work by Dassonneville et al. [Physical Review X 10, 011045 (2020)], on qubit readout with a non-perturbative cross-Kerr coupling in a transmon molecule. We demonstrate a readout fidelity of 99.21% with 89 photons utilizing a parametric amplifier. At this elevated photon number, the QND nature remains high at 96.7%. Even with up to 300 photons, the QNDness is only reduced by a few percent. This is qualitatively explained by deriving a critical number of photons associated with the nonlinear coupling, yielding a theoretical value of nˉrcrit=377\bar{n}_r^\text{crit} = 377nˉrcrit​=377 photons for our sample's parameters. These results highlight the promising performance of the transmon molecule in the high-power regime, establishing it as a compelling platform for high-fidelity qubit readout.
One approach to quantum information processing is to use photons as quantum bits and rely on linear optical elements for most operations. However, some optical nonlinearity is necessary to enable universal quantum computing. Here, we suggest a circuit-QED approach to nonlinear optics quantum computing in the microwave regime, including a deterministic two-photon phase gate. Our specific example uses a hybrid quantum system comprising a LC resonator coupled to a superconducting flux qubit to implement a nonlinear coupling. Compared to the self-Kerr nonlinearity, we find that our approach has improved tolerance to noise in the qubit while maintaining fast operation.
We propose a scheme for implementing cross-Kerr nonlinearity between two superconducting transmission line resonators (TLRs) via their interactions with a coupler constructed by two superconducting transmon qubits connected to each other through a superconducting quantum interference device. When suitably driven, the coupler can induce very strong cross phase modulation (XPM) between the two TLRs due to its NNN-type level structure and the consequent electromagnetically induced transparency in its lowest states. The flexibility of our design can lead to various inter-TLR coupling configurations. The obtained cross-Kerr coefficient is large enough to allow many important quantum operations in which only few photons are involved. We further show that this scheme is very robust against fluctuations in solid-state quantum circuits. Our numerical calculations imply that the absorption and the dispersion of the TLRs resulting from the decoherence of the coupler are very small compared with the proposed XPM strength.
Josephson junctions are a fundamental building block of superconducting quantum circuits. They provide the nonlinearity required to realize quantum bits and enable a wide range of nonlinear phenomena central to quantum technologies. This thesis explores two superconducting systems in which this nonlinearity plays a central role. In the first part, we investigate a superconducting resonator terminated by a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID), an arrangement of two Josephson junctions connected in parallel. The SQUID provides a tunable Kerr nonlinearity and allows the resonator to be driven parametrically. Under the combined action of the parametric drive, Kerr nonlinearity, and dissipation to the environment, the state of the resonator can undergo abrupt changes as the pump frequency or amplitude is varied. We interpret these changes within the framework of dissipative phase transitions (DPTs). By implementing a finite-component thermodynamic limit, we experimentally and theoretically investigate both first- and second-order DPTs in this system. We characterize their steady-state and dynamical signatures, including squeezing below vacuum, phase coexistence, hysteresis, spontaneous symmetry breaking, and critical slowing down. Finally, we exploit the enhanced susceptibility near the second-order critical point to implement a frequency-estimation protocol. We show that the estimation precision scales quadratically with the effective system size, demonstrating that finite-component DPTs can provide a quantum advantage in a sensing protocol. In the second part, we investigate a novel architecture for the readout of superconducting qubits. Conventional dispersive readout relies on a transverse interaction between a transmon and a resonator, which can lead to Purcell decay and measurement-induced state transitions, ultimately limiting the readout fidelity. To overcome these limitations, we implement a nonlinear coupling by galvanically connecting the transmon and resonator through a Josephson junction. This interaction provides a strong cross-Kerr coupling for clear state discrimination, but also introduces a detrimental transverse interaction. We experimentally show that the exchange part of the transverse interaction can be suppressed by adding a capacitor in parallel with the coupling junction while preserving the strong cross-Kerr coupling. In addition, we show that the same circuit acts as an intrinsic Purcell filter, protecting the qubit against Purcell decay. The coupling junction also induces a Kerr nonlinearity in the resonator, which we exploit to implement a bifurcation readout with a 99.4 % fidelity in a 68 ns integration time. This performance is achieved without a dedicated Purcell filter or a near-quantum-limited amplifier. Overall, this thesis demonstrates the engineering of nonlinear superconducting circuits to investigate dissipative phase transitions, exploit criticality for enhanced quantum sensing, and develop a novel qubit readout architecture enabling fast, high-fidelity measurement.