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AIP conference proceedings

Implementation of decoherence-protected logical qubits in medium-size Josephson-junction arrays

Benoît Douçot, L. B. Ioffe, Vladimir Lebedev, M. V. Feigel’man

Published Jan 1, 2009• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We outline the physical principles underlying the design of finite size superconducting arrays that may serve as protected qubits. These systems are built from fully frustrated rhombi consisting of four Josephson junctions; their low energy spectrum is composed of localized Z2 charge excitations and π phase vortices. Protection from both the phase and flip errors requires a balance between charging and Josephson energies; optimization of the array size results in the hierarchical construction of these arrays. We have developed computational methods, based on a combination of perturbation theory and numerical diagonalization, which allow us to compute the global phase stiffness and the energy of localized charge excitations in various geometries. We present the most promising designs, which are currently under experimental investigation.

DOI
10.1063/1.3149484

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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•Aug 24, 2004•0 citations
We outline the physical principles underlying the design of finite size superconducting arrays that may serve as protected qubits. These systems are built from fully frustrated rhombi consisting of four Josephson junctions; their low energy spectrum is composed of localized Z2 charge excitations and π phase vortices. Protection from both the phase and flip errors requires a balance between charging and Josephson energies; optimization of the array size results in the hierarchical construction of these arrays. We have developed computational methods, based on a combination of perturbation theory and numerical diagonalization, which allow us to compute the global phase stiffness and the energy of localized charge excitations in various geometries. We present the most promising designs, which are currently under experimental investigation.
We present general symmetry arguments that show the appearance of doubly degenerate states protected from external perturbations in a wide class of Hamiltonians. We construct the simplest spin Hamiltonian belonging to this class and study its properties both analytically and numerically. We find that this model generally has a number of low energy modes which might destroy the protection in the thermodynamic limit. These modes are qualitatively different from the usual gapless excitations as their number scales as the linear size (instead of volume) of the system. We show that the Hamiltonians with this symmetry can be physically implemented in Josephson junction arrays and that in these arrays one can eliminate the low energy modes with a proper boundary condition. We argue that these arrays provide fault tolerant quantum bits. Further we show that the simplest spin model with this symmetry can be mapped to a very special Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ Chern-Simons model on the square lattice. We argue that appearance of the low energy modes and the protected degeneracy is a natural property of lattice Chern-Simons theories. Finally, we discuss a general formalism for the construction of discrete Chern-Simons theories on a lattice.
In this thesis we consider a Josephson junction device whose symmetry is described by the point group Td. It can be visualized as a tetrahedron that contains two Josephson junctions on each edge. We find the conditions under which the ground state of the system is degenerate or almost degenerate. In this case, the low-energy degrees of freedom can be mapped to the Hilbert space of a quantum spin 1/2. We evaluate effects of different physical perturbations on the degenerate ground state and find that they are small for most perturbations. We argue that this system can be considered as a very promising candidate for a protected quantum bit with built-in error correction. We propose and discuss an experimental method that allows to test validity of some of the theoretical results obtained for the tetrahedral Josephson junction array and other similar symmetric circuits. We have chosen a simpler pyramidal array to demonstrate the main ideas of our method. Even though the noise resistance and theoretical decoherence time of the pyramidal array are worse than those of the more complex tetrahedral systems, it is much easier to realize the pyramid experimentally. The proposed design can be used with any symmetric Josephson junction circuit. We explore a natural generalization of the tetrahedral quantum bit and consider devices whose symmetry can be described by one of the higher-order permutation groups Sn. We study the level structure and the associated built-in protection of some conceptually simple circuits and show that these circuits have many interesting properties. In particular, their ground state can be highly degenerate and stable with respect to perturbations violating the symmetry. Unfortunately, these highly symmetric systems consist of a large number of identical Josephson junctions. This makes them too complicated for experimental realization.
The field of quantum computing is growing at a rapid rate with the promise of dramatic improvements in the ability to solve critical computational problems. A leading approach for implementing fault-tolerant quantum computers is based on superconducting circuits containing Josephson junctions to form qubits. These qubits have many attractive qualities, but predicting the device performance requires detailed knowledge of the junction properties. Thus, precise characterization is crucial for realizing different qubit designs. The coherence of superconducting qubits is limited by several sources in the circuit en- vironment. Building a quantum computer requires effort to reduce gate errors caused by decoherence. This is typically achieved with quantum error correction. An alternative ap- proach involves designing qubits that are intrinsically protected from noise sources. One such design is the charge-parity qubit, which combines Josephson junctions in a novel regime. The capacitance of the junctions is a critical parameter for this qubit design that directly affects the engineered protection against decoherence. Beyond the conventional geometric capaci- tance, there is an excess contribution from virtual quasiparticle tunneling; we refer to this component as the electronic capacitance. This thesis focuses on the characterization of the capacitance of Josephson junctions, with the goal of isolating and measuring the electronic capacitance contribution, particularly for use in the charge-parity qubit. The thesis first reviews the initial implementation of the charge-parity qubit and the challenges that were encountered. Next, the theoretical origin is described and a framework for measuring the junction capacitance using superconducting resonant circuits is described. This technique is then applied to arrays of junctions fabricated with different parameters and the scaling of the electronic capacitance is presented. Finally, based on this knowledge of the junction capacitance, second-generation charge-parity qubits are implemented and the experimental results are presented.
Superconducting qubits have in recent years become a promising candidate for the implementation of a quantum computer due to their design flexibility, good protection from decohering elementary excitations, and availability of well developed fabrication and measurement techniques. Superconducting flux qubits, for which the effect of offset charge noise is reduced due to the fact that the Josephson energy dominates over the charging energy, correspond to one of the proposed means of designing a superconducting qubit. A nonlinear dispersive readout scheme of flux qubits involving a DC SQUID magnetometer that avoids the effects of on-chip dissipation can be readily implemented, yielding high contrast output for single qubit readout. Coupling schemes via nonlinear Josephson elements have also been realized. On the other hand, while the means of isolating superconducting qubits from external noise sources has been found, the mechanisms by which they undergo relaxation and decoherence due to intrinsic noise sources in the junctions themselves are not very well understood, and the question of how to deal with these noise sources remains unanswered in the general case. Other questions deal with the problem of experimentally observing entanglement in an array of coupled superconducting qubits, and finding the means by which the existence of entanglement in a typical laboratory setup may to some extent be verified by measurements on a global scale. Following a brief introductory review, we will first investigate the influence of a Two-Level Fluctuator on a DC SQUID driven by a finite current bias. Then we introduce a directly measurable signature of multiqubit entanglement for a large system of qubits and show that it is compatible to a recently introduced measure of global entanglement.
A superconducting-phase quantum bit (qubit) involves three or more Josephson junctions combined into a superconducting loop and defines one of the promising solid-state device implementations for quantum computing. Recently, so called $\ensuremath{\pi}$ junctions, Josephson junctions with a ground state characterized by a \ensuremath{\pi}-phase shift across, have attracted much attention. We show how to make use of such $\ensuremath{\pi}$ junctions in the construction of superconducting phase qubits and discuss the advantage over conventional designs based on magnetically frustrated loops. Starting from a basic five-junction loop with one $\ensuremath{\pi}$ junction, we show how to construct effective junctions with degenerate minima characterized by phase shifts 0 and $\ensuremath{\pi}$ and superconducting-phase switches. These elements are then combined into a superconducting-phase qubit which operates exclusively with switches, thus avoiding permanent contact with the environment through external biasing. The resulting superconducting-phase qubits can be understood as the macroscopic analog of the ``quiet'' s-wave--d-wave--s-wave Josephson-junction qubits introduced by Ioffe et al. [Nature (London) 398, 679 (1999)].
A realistic implemetation of the macroscopic quantum computer requires that individual qubits are realized as quantum systems with degenerate ground states which are well protected from the effects of the environment. I show how this protection can be achieved in the new class of Josephson arrays with non-trivial symmetry or topology. For such "topologically protected" arrays the effect of noise is exponentially small in the array size which allows one in principle to get extremely small error rates and extremely long dephasing times in these systems. In this review I present a simple physical picture of the topological protection and explain why it is related to the presence of the topological order parameter in these systems. I formulate a set of general mathematical requirements on a model that ensures the appearance of the protected degenerate states and show how these conditions can be satisfied in a simple spin model. Finally I present Josephson junction array that is described by the mathematical model which satisfy these conditions and discuss its physical properties and how one can test these predictions experimentally.