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IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Inductance effects in the persistent current qubit

Donald S. Crankshaw, Terry P. Orlando

Published Mar 1, 2001• 16 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A general method is illustrated to show that the Hamiltonian for circuits of Josephson junctions can be expanded in terms of three Hamiltonians: a Hamiltonian representative of the inductance-free circuit, a Hamiltonian in the form of an harmonic oscillator for the inductance effects of the circulating currents, and a small correction term. This method is used to show that the inductive effects are a small correction to the difference in energy levels in the persistent current qubit.

DOI
10.1109/77.919519

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A general method is illustrated to show that the Hamiltonian for circuits of Josephson junctions can be expanded in terms of three Hamiltonians: a Hamiltonian representative of the inductance-free circuit, a Hamiltonian in the form of an harmonic oscillator for the inductance effects of the circulating currents, and a small correction term. This method is used to show that the inductive effects are a small correction to the difference in energy levels in the persistent current qubit.
An effective Hamiltonian is derived for two coupled three-Josephson-junction (3JJ) qubits. This is not quite trivial, for the customary ``free'' 3JJ Hamiltonian is written in the limit of zero inductance LLL. Neglecting the self-flux is already dubious for one qubit when it comes to readout, and becomes untenable when discussing inductive coupling. First, inductance effects are analyzed for a single qubit. For small LLL, the self-flux is a ``fast variable,'' which can be eliminated adiabatically. However, the commonly used junction phases are not appropriate ``slow variables,'' and instead one introduces degrees of freedom that are decoupled from the loop current to leading order. In the quantum case, the zero-point fluctuations (LCLCLC oscillations) in the loop current diverge as $L\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$. While their effect thus formally dominates over the classical self-flux, it merely renormalizes the Josephson couplings of the effective (two-phase) theory. In the coupled case, the strong zero-point fluctuations render the full (six-phase) wave function significantly entangled in leading order. However, in going to the four-phase theory, this uncontrollable entanglement is integrated out completely, leaving a computationally usable mutual-inductance term of the expected form as the effective interaction.
We derive the Hamiltonian of a superconducting circuit that comprises a single-Josephson-junction flux qubit inductively coupled to an LC oscillator, and we compare the derived circuit Hamiltonian with the quantum Rabi Hamiltonian, which describes a two-level system coupled to a harmonic oscillator. We show that there is a simple, intuitive correspondence between the circuit Hamiltonian and the quantum Rabi Hamiltonian. While there is an overall shift of the entire spectrum, the energy level structure of the circuit Hamiltonian up to the seventh excited states can still be fitted well by the quantum Rabi Hamiltonian even in the case where the coupling strength is larger than the frequencies of the qubit and the oscillator, i.e., when the qubit-oscillator circuit is in the deep-strong-coupling regime. We also show that although the circuit Hamiltonian can be transformed via a unitary transformation to a Hamiltonian containing a capacitive coupling term, the resulting circuit Hamiltonian cannot be approximated by the variant of the quantum Rabi Hamiltonian that is obtained using an analogous procedure for mapping the circuit variables onto Pauli and harmonic oscillator operators, even for relatively weak coupling. This difference between the flux and charge gauges follows from the properties of the qubit Hamiltonian eigenstates.
An optimal effective current operator for flux qubit has been investigated by taking account of the inductive effects of the circuit loop. The whole system is treated as two interacting subsystems: one is the inductance-free flux qubit consisting of three Josephson junctions and the other a high frequency LCLCLC oscillator. As the composite system hardly affords one excessively high-energy LCLCLC photon, an effective theory for the inductive flux qubit providing its physical variable operators has been achieved, which can take account of the inductive effects but does not include the additional degree of freedom for the LCLCLC oscillator. Considering the tradeoff between simplicity and accuracy, it has been revealed that the optimal effective current operator resulting in an error only on the order of L3/2{L}^{3/2}L3/2 provides an approximation of high accuracy, which is also verified numerically.
The three-junction flux qubit (quantum bit) consists of three Josephson junctions connected in series on a superconducting loop. We present a numerical treatment of this device for the general case in which the ratio ${\ensuremath{\beta}}_{Q}$ of the geometrical inductance of the loop to the kinetic inductance of the Josephson junctions is not necessarily negligible. Relatively large geometric inductances allow the flux through each qubit to be controlled independently with on-chip bias lines, an essential consideration for scalability. We derive the three-dimensional potential in terms of the macroscopic degrees of freedom, and include the possible effects of asymmetry among the junctions and of stray capacitance associated with them. To find solutions of the Hamiltonian, we use basis functions consisting of the product of two plane wave states and a harmonic oscillator eigenfunction to compute the energy levels and eigenfunctions of the qubit numerically. We present calculated energy levels for the relevant range of ${\ensuremath{\beta}}_{Q}$. As ${\ensuremath{\beta}}_{Q}$ is increased beyond 0.50.50.5, the tunnel splitting between the ground and first excited states decreases rapidly, and the device becomes progressively less useful as a qubit.
The Hamiltonian of a charge qubit, which consists of two Josephson junctions is found within well known quantum mechanical procedure. The inductance of the qubit is included from the very beginning. It allows a selfconsistent derivation of the current operator in a two state basis. It is shown that the current operator has nonzero nondiagonal matrix elements both in the charge and the eigenstate basis. It is also shown that the interaction of the qubit with its own LC resonator has a noticeable influence on the qubit energies. The influence of the junctions asymmetry and the gate capacitance on the matrix elements of the current operator and on the qubit energies are calculated. The results obtained in the paper are important for the circuits where two or more charge qubits are coupled with the aid of inductive coil.
A complete analysis of the decoherence properties of a Josephson junction qubit is presented. The qubit is of the flux type and consists of two large loops forming a gradiometer, one small loop, and three Josephson junctions. We develop a complete, quantitative description of the inductances and capacitances of the circuit. Including two stray capacitances makes the quantum mechanical modeling of the system five dimensional. To make the required calculation tractable, we devise a general Born-Oppenheimer approximation which reduces the effective dimensionality in the calculation to one. Contributions to relaxation (T1)({T}_{1})(T1​) and dephasing $({T}_{\ensuremath{\phi}})$ arising from two different control circuits, one coupled to the small loop and one coupled to a large loop, is computed. We explore T1{T}_{1}T1​ and ${T}_{\ensuremath{\phi}}$ along an optimal line in the space of applied fluxes; along this ``S line'' we see significant and rapidly varying contributions to the decoherence parameters, primarily from the circuit coupling to the large loop.