Abstract We apply polymer quantization, a quantization technique sometimes used in high energy physics, to several superconducting circuits including: transmons, transmission line resonators, and LC circuits. In the case of transmon qubits and transmission line resonators, experimental predictions are very close to what is found with canonical quantization, though in this approach constant charge offsets can be interpreted as quantization ambiguities. In the case of LC circuits, polymer quantization predicts nonlinearities which are not present in the canonical approach. Based on this analysis we design and analyze a qubit which uses a meander inductor instead of a Josephson junction. Implications for qubit performance and fabrication are discussed. Given a choice for an effective phase operator, relevant parameters such as anharmonicity, frequency, and dispersive shifts are calculated for this meander inductor based qubit.
Abstract We apply polymer quantization, a quantization technique sometimes used in high energy physics, to several superconducting circuits including: transmons, transmission line resonators, and LC circuits. In the case of transmon qubits and transmission line resonators, experimental predictions are very close to what is found with canonical quantization, though in this approach constant charge offsets can be interpreted as quantization ambiguities. In the case of LC circuits, polymer quantization predicts nonlinearities which are not present in the canonical approach. Based on this analysis we design and analyze a qubit which uses a meander inductor instead of a Josephson junction. Implications for qubit performance and fabrication are discussed. Given a choice for an effective phase operator, relevant parameters such as anharmonicity, frequency, and dispersive shifts are calculated for this meander inductor based qubit.
The quantization of superconducting transmission-line resonators is usually introduced phenomenologically by modeling the resonator as an effective LC circuit and imposing canonical commutation relations on macroscopic variables such as charge and flux. Although this approach is highly successful, it leaves open why these macroscopic variables should obey quantum commutation relations and how this behavior emerges from the superconducting state. In this work, starting from the microscopic pairing Hamiltonian underlying BCS superconductivity, we derive the low-energy effective Hamiltonian of a circuit-QED architecture containing a superconducting transmission line with distributed capacitive and inductive elements. We establish quantitative relations between macroscopic observables, including current and voltage, and the spatially local superconducting phase, as well as the microscopic parameters of the electron-phonon system. We then extend the third quantization of the superconducting order parameter, introduced in Paper (I) for the global phase, to the spatially local case. This gives a macroscopic field quantization of the superconducting phase. We show that, after restriction to the low-energy excitation subspace, the local superconducting phase becomes a genuine quantum dynamical variable. Thus, the quantum behavior of transmission-line resonators need not be postulated at the macroscopic level, but follows from the third quantization of the superconducting order parameter. These results suggest that capacitive and inductive superconducting circuit elements share the same microscopic origin, providing a unified framework for superconducting circuit quantization.
In the quest to produce quantum technology, superconducting networks, working at temperatures just above absolute zero, have arisen as one of the most promising physical implementations. The precise analysis and synthesis of such circuits have required merging the fields of physics, engineering, and mathematics. In this dissertation, we develop mathematically consistent and precise Hamiltonian models to describe ideal superconducting networks made of an arbitrary number of lumped elements, such as capacitors, inductors, Josephson and phase-slip junctions, gyrators, etc., and distributed ones like transmission lines. We give formal proofs for the decoupling at high and low frequencies of lumped degrees of freedom from infinite-dimensional systems in different coupling configurations in models based on the effective Kirchhoff's laws. We extend the standard theory to quantize circuits that include ideal nonreciprocal elements all the way to their Hamiltonian descriptions in a systematic way. Finally, we pave the way on how to quantize general frequency-dependent gyrators and circulators coupled to both transmission lines and other lumped-element networks. We have explicitly shown, that these models, albeit ideal, are finite and present no divergence issues. We explain and dispel misunderstandings from the previous literature. Furthermore, we have demonstrated the usefulness of a redundant basis for performing separation of variables of the transmission line (1D) fields in the presence of point-like (lumped-element) couplings by time-reversal symmetry-breaking terms, i.e. nonreciprocal elements.
This paper presents a computational analysis of a superconducting transmon qubit design, in which the superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) Josephson junction is replaced by a coplanar, superconductor-constriction-superconductor (ScS) nanobridge junction. Within the scope of Ginzburg-Landau theory, we find that the nanobridge ScS transmon has an improved charge dispersion compared to the SIS transmon, with a tradeoff of smaller anharmonicity. These calculations provide a framework for estimating the superconductor material properties and junction dimensions compatible with gigahertz frequency ScS transmon operation.
Abstract Quantum computing has been developed for many physical systems, and superconducting qubits are now in the integration phase. To efficiently design a many qubit system, an appropriate circuit simulator is necessary. Despite the existence of simulators for circuits including Josephson junctions, simpler circuit simulators are desirable when considering integrated qubits controlled by millions of transistors. This study examines the application of conventional Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis simulators to analyze transmission signals of the system composed of transmons in the dispersive regime. Further, the influences of device parameter variations caused by the fabrication process can be taken into the model.
Superconducting circuits are being used for large-scale quantum devices, and a major challenge is to perform accurate numerical simulations of device parameters. One of the most advanced methods for analyzing superconducting circuit designs is the energy-participation-ratio (EPR) method, which constructs quantum Hamiltonians based on the energy distribution extracted from classical electromagnetic simulations. In the EPR approach, we extract linear terms from finite-element simulations and add nonlinear terms using the energy participation ratio extracted from the classical simulations. However, the EPR method relies on a low-order expansion of nonlinear terms, which is prohibitive for accurately describing highly anharmonic circuits. An example of such a circuit is the fluxonium qubit, which has recently attracted increasing attention due to its high lifetimes and low error rates. In this work, we extend the EPR approach to effectively address highly nonlinear superconducting circuits, and, as a proof of concept, we apply our approach to a fluxonium qubit. Specifically, we design, fabricate, and experimentally measure a fluxonium qubit coupled to a readout resonator. We compare the measured frequencies of both the qubit and the resonator to those extracted from the EPR analysis, and we find an excellent agreement. Furthermore, we compare the dispersive shift as a function of external flux obtained from experiments with our EPR analysis and a simpler lumped-element model. Our findings reveal that the EPR results closely align with the experimental data, providing more accurate estimations compared to the simplified lumped-element simulations.
This dissertation examines the design, fabrication, and characterization of a superconducting lumped-element tunable LC resonator that is used to vary the coupling between two superconducting qubits. Some level of qubit-qubit coupling is needed to perform gating operations. However, with fixed coupling, single qubit operations become considerably more difficult due to dispersive shifts in their energy levels transitions that depend on the state of the other qubit. Ideally, one wants a system in which the qubit-qubit coupling can be turned off to allow for single qubit operations, and then turned back on to allow for multi-qubit gate operations. I present results on a device that has two fixed-frequency transmon qubits capacitively coupled to a tunable thin-film LC resonator. The resonator can be tuned in situ over a range of 4.14 GHz to 4.94 GHz by applying an external magnetic flux to two single-Josephson junction loops, which are incorporated into the resonator’s inductance. The qubits have 0-to-1 transition frequencies of 5.10 GHz and 4.74 GHz. To isolate the system and provide a means for reading out the state of the qubit readout, the device was mounted in a 3D Al microwave cavity with a TE101 mode resonance frequency of about 6.1 GHz. The flux-dependent transition frequencies of the system were measured and fit to results from a coupled Hamiltonian model. With the LC resonator tuned to its minimum resonance frequency, I observed a qubit-qubit dispersive shift of 2χ_qq≈ 0.1 MHz, which was less than the linewidth of the qubit transitions. This dispersive shift was sufficiently small to consider the coupling “off”, allowing single qubit operations. The qubit-qubit dispersive shift varied with the applied flux up to a maximum dispersive shift of 2χ_qq≈ 6 MHz. As a proof-of-principle, I present preliminary results on performing a CNOT gate operation on the qubits when the coupling was “on” with 2χ_qq≈ 4 MHz. This dissertation also includes observations of the temperature dependence of the relaxation time T1 of three Al/AlOx/Al transmons. We found that, in some cases, T1 increased by almost a factor of two as the temperature increased from 30 mK to 100 mK. We found that this anomalous behavior was consistent with loss due to non-equilibrium quasiparticles in a transmon where one electrode in the tunnel junction had a smaller volume and slightly smaller superconducting energy gap than the other electrode. At sufficiently low temperatures, non-equilibrium quasiparticles accumulate in the electrode with a smaller gap, leading to an increased density of quasiparticles at the junction and a corresponding decrease in the relaxation time. I present a model of this effect, use the model to extract the density of non-equilibrium quasiparticles in the device, and find the values of the two superconducting energy gaps.