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arXiv:2304.05601

Quantum control and noise protection of a Floquet $0-π$ qubit

Zhaoyou Wang, Amir H. Safavi‐Naeini

Published Apr 12, 2023• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Time-periodic systems allow engineering new effective Hamiltonians from limited physical interactions. For example, the inverted position of the Kapitza pendulum emerges as a stable equilibrium with rapid drive of its pivot point. In this work, we propose the $\textit{Kapitzonium}$: a Floquet qubit that is the superconducting circuit analog of a mechanical Kapitza pendulum. Under periodic driving, the emerging qubit states are exponentially protected against bit and phase flips caused by dissipation, which is the primary source of decoherence of current qubits. However, we find that dissipation causes leakage out of the Floquet qubit subspace. We engineer a passive cooling scheme to stabilize the qubit subspace, which is crucial for high fidelity quantum control under dissipation. Furthermore, we introduce a hardware-efficient fluorescence-based method for qubit measurement and discuss the experimental implementation of the Floquet qubit. The proposed Kapitzonium is one of the simplest Floquet qubits that can be realized with current technology -- and it already has many intriguing features and capabilities. Our work provides the first steps to develop more complex Floquet quantum systems from the ground up to realize large-scale protected engineered dynamics.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2304.05601

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Quantum control and noise protection of a Floquet 0−π0-π0−π qubit
Time-periodic systems allow engineering new effective Hamiltonians from limited physical interactions. For example, the inverted position of the Kapitza pendulum emerges as a stable equilibrium with rapid drive of its pivot point. In this work, we propose the Kapitzonium\textit{Kapitzonium}Kapitzonium: a Floquet qubit that is the superconducting circuit analog of a mechanical Kapitza pendulum. Under periodic driving, the emerging qubit states are exponentially protected against bit and phase flips caused by dissipation, which is the primary source of decoherence of current qubits. However, we find that dissipation causes leakage out of the Floquet qubit subspace. We engineer a passive cooling scheme to stabilize the qubit subspace, which is crucial for high fidelity quantum control under dissipation. Furthermore, we introduce a hardware-efficient fluorescence-based method for qubit measurement and discuss the experimental implementation of the Floquet qubit. The proposed Kapitzonium is one of the simplest Floquet qubits that can be realized with current technology -- and it already has many intriguing features and capabilities. Our work provides the first steps to develop more complex Floquet quantum systems from the ground up to realize large-scale protected engineered dynamics.
I demonstrate the potential of reinforcement learning (RL) to prepare quantum states of strongly periodically driven nonlinear single-particle models. The ability of Q-learning to control systems far away from equilibrium is exhibited by steering the quantum Kapitza oscillator to the Floquet-engineered stable inverted position in the presence of a strong periodic drive within several shaking cycles. The study reveals the potential of the intraperiod (micromotion) dynamics, often neglected in Floquet engineering, to take advantage over pure stroboscopic control at moderate drive frequencies. Without any knowledge about the underlying physical system, the algorithm is capable of learning solely from tried protocols and directly from simulated noisy quantum measurement data, and is stable to noise in the initial state and sources of random failure events in the control sequence. Model-free RL can provide new insights into automating experimental setups for out-of-equilibrium systems undergoing complex dynamics, with potential applications in quantum information, quantum optics, ultracold atoms, trapped ions, and condensed matter.
Quantum computing crucially relies on maintaining quantum coherence for the duration of a calculation. Bosonic quantum error correction protects this coherence by encoding qubits into superpositions of noise-resilient oscillator states. In the case of the Kerr-cat qubit (KCQ), these states derive their stability from being the quasi-degenerate ground states of an engineered Hamiltonian in a driven nonlinear oscillator. KCQs are experimentally compatible with on-chip architectures and high-fidelity operations, making them promising candidates for a scalable bosonic quantum processor. However, their bit-flip time must increase further to fully leverage these advantages. Here, we present direct evidence that the bit-flip time in a KCQ is limited by leakage out of the qubit manifold and experimentally mitigate this process. We coherently control the leakage population and measure it to be > 9%, twelve times higher than in the undriven system. We then cool this population back into the KCQ manifold with engineered dissipation, identify conditions under which this suppresses bit-flips, and demonstrate increased bit-flip times up to 3.6 milliseconds. By employing both Hamiltonian confinement and engineered dissipation, our experiment combines two paradigms for Schrödinger-cat qubit stabilization. Our results elucidate the interplay between these stabilization processes and indicate a path towards fully realizing the potential of these qubits for quantum error correction.
Quantum technology resorts to efficient utilization of quantum resources to realize technique innovation. The systems are controlled such that their states follow the desired manners to realize different quantum protocols. However, the decoherence caused by the system-environment interactions causes the states deviating from the desired manners. How to protect quantum resources under the coexistence of active control and passive decoherence is of significance. Recent studies have revealed that the decoherence is determined by the feature of the system-environment energy spectrum: Accompanying the formation of bound states in the energy spectrum, the decoherence can be suppressed. It supplies a guideline to control decoherence. Such idea can be generalized to systems under periodic driving. By virtue of manipulating Floquet bound states in the quasienergy spectrum, coherent control via periodic driving dubbed as Floquet engineering has become a versatile tool not only in controlling decoherence, but also in artificially synthesizing exotic topological phases. We will review the progress on quantum control in open and periodically driven systems. Special attention will be paid to the distinguished role played by the bound states and their controllability via periodic driving in suppressing decoherence and generating novel topological phases.
Floquet engineering is a powerful method that can be used to modify the properties of interacting many-body Hamiltonians via the application of periodic time-dependent drives. Here, we consider the physics of an inductively shunted superconducting Josephson junction in the presence of Floquet drives in the fluxonium regime and beyond, which we dub the frozonium artificial atom. We find that in the vicinity of special ratios of the drive amplitude and frequency, the many-body dynamics can be tuned to that of an effectively linear bosonic oscillator, with additional nonlinear corrections that are suppressed in higher powers of the drive frequency. By analyzing the inverse participation ratios between the time-evolved frozonium wavefunctions and the eigenbasis of a linear oscillator, we demonstrate the ability to achieve a novel dynamical control using a combination of numerical exact diagonalization and Floquet-Magnus expansion. We discuss the physics of resonances between quasi-energy states induced by the drive and ways to mitigate their effects. We also highlight the enhanced protection of frozonium against external sources of noise present in experimental setups. This work lays the foundation for future applications in quantum memory and bosonic quantum control using superconducting circuits.
Artificial atoms realized by superconducting circuits offer unique opportunities to store and process quantum information with high fidelity.Among them, implementations of circuits that harness intrinsic noise protection have been rapidly developed in recent years.These noise-protected devices constitute a new class of qubits in which the computational states are largely decoupled from local noise channels.The main challenges in engineering such systems are simultaneously guarding against both bit-and phase-flip errors, and also ensuring high-fidelity qubit control.Although partial noise protection is possible in superconducting circuits relying on a single quantum degree of freedom, the promise of complete protection can only be fulfilled by implementing multimode or hybrid circuits.This Perspective reviews the theoretical principles at the heart of these new qubits, describes recent experiments, and highlights the potential of robust encoding of quantum information in superconducting qubits.