Quantum information processing with superconducting qubits

Abhinav Kandala

Max Hays, Valla Fatemi, Daniël Bouman +9 more

Superconducting spin qubit To date, the most promising solid-state approaches for developing quantum information-processing systems have been based on the circulating supercurrents of superconducting circuits and manipulating the spin properties of electrons in semiconductor quantum dots. Hays et al. combined the desirable aspects of both approaches, the scalability of the superconducting circuits and the compact footprint of the quantum dots, to design and fabricate a superconducting spin qubit (see the Perspective by Wendin and Shumeiko). This so-called Andreev spin qubit provides the opportunity to develop a new quantum information processing platform. Science , abf0345, this issue p. 430 ; see also abk0929, p. 390

Robert J. Schoelkopf

Franco Nori

Superconducting (SC) circuits can behave like atoms making transitions between a few energy levels. Such circuits can test quantum mechanics at macroscopic scales and be used to conduct atomic-physics experiments on a silicon chip. This talk overviews a few of our theoretical studies on SC circuits and quantum information processing (QIP) including: SC qubits for single photon generation and for lasing; controllable couplings among qubits; how to increase the coherence time of qubits using a capacitor in parallel to one of the qubit junctions; hybrid circuits involving both charge and flux qubits; testing Bell’s inequality in SC circuits; generation of GHZ states; quantum tomography in SC circuits; preparation of macroscopic quantum superposition states of a cavity field via coupling to a SC qubit; generation of nonclassical photon states using a SC qubit in a microcavity; scalable quantum computing with SC qubits; and information processing with SC qubits in a microwave field. Controllable couplings between qubits can be achieved either directly or indirectly. This can be done with and without coupler circuits, and with and without data-buses like EM fields in cavities (e.g., we will describe both the variable-frequency magnetic flux approach and also a generalized double-resonance approach that we introduced). It is also possible to “turn a quantum bug into a feature” by using microscopic defects as qubits, and the macroscopic junction as a controller of it. We have also studied ways to implement radically different approaches to QIP by using “cluster states” in SC circuits.

Yuichiro Matsuzaki, Hayato Nakano

For quantum information processing, each physical system has a different advantage as regards implementation, so hybrid systems that benefit from the advantage of several systems would provide a promising approach. One common hybrid approach involves combining a superconducting qubit as a controllable qubit and another quantum system with a long coherence time as a memory qubit. The use of a superconducting qubit gives us excellent controllability of the quantum states, and the memory qubit is capable of storing information for a long time. It has been believed that selective coupling can be realized between a superconducting qubit and a memory qubit by tuning the energy splitting between them. However, we have shown that this detuning approach has a fundamental drawback as regards energy leakage from the memory qubit. Even if the superconducting qubit is effectively separated by reasonable detuning, a non-negligible incoherent energy relaxation in the memory qubit occurs via residual weak coupling when the superconducting qubit is affected by severe dephasing. This energy transport from the memory qubit to the control qubit can be interpreted as the appearance of the anti--quantum Zeno effect induced by the fluctuation in the superconducting qubit. We also discuss possible ways to avoid this energy relaxation process, which is feasible with existing technology.

Johannes Heinsoo