Historically our understanding of the microscopic world has been impeded by limitations in systems that behave classically. Even today, understanding simple problems in quantum mechanics remains a difficult task both computationally and experimentally. As a means of overcoming these classical limitations, the idea of using a controllable quantum system to simulate a less controllable quantum system has been proposed. This concept is known as quantum simulation and is the origin of the ideas behind quantum computing. In this thesis, experiments have been conducted that address the feasibility of using devices with a circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) architecture as a quantum simulator. In a cQED device, a superconducting qubit is capacitively coupled to a superconducting resonator resulting in coherent quantum behavior of the qubit when it interacts with photons inside the resonator. It has been shown theoretically that by forming a lattice of cQED elements, different quantum phases of photons will exist for dierent system parameters. In order to realize such a quantum simulator, the necessary experimental foundation must rst be developed. Here experimental eorts were focused on addressing two primary issues: 1) designing and fabricating low disorder lattices that are readily available to incorporate superconducting qubits, and 2) developing new measurement tools and techniques that can be used to characterize large lattices, and probe the predicted quantum phases within the lattice. Three experiments addressing these issues were performed. In the rst experiment a Kagome lattice of transmission line resonators was designed and fabricated, and a comprehensive study on the effects of random disorder in the lattice demonstrated that disorder was dependent on the resonator geometry. Subsequently a cryogenic 3-axis scanning stage was developed and the operation of the scanning stage was demonstrated in the final two experiments. The rst scanning experiment was conducted on a 49 site Kagome lattice, where a sapphire defect was used to locally perturb each lattice site. This perturbative scanning probe microscopy provided a means to measure the distribution of photon modes throughout the entire lattice. The second scanning experiment was performed on a single transmission line resonator where a transmon qubit was fabricated on a separate substrate, mounted to the tip of the scanning stage and coupled to the resonator. Here the coupling strength of the qubit to the resonator was mapped out demonstrating strong coupling over a wide scanning range, thus indicating the potential for a scanning qubit to be used as a local quantum probe.
Historically our understanding of the microscopic world has been impeded by limitations in systems that behave classically. Even today, understanding simple problems in quantum mechanics remains a difficult task both computationally and experimentally. As a means of overcoming these classical limitations, the idea of using a controllable quantum system to simulate a less controllable quantum system has been proposed. This concept is known as quantum simulation and is the origin of the ideas behind quantum computing. In this thesis, experiments have been conducted that address the feasibility of using devices with a circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) architecture as a quantum simulator. In a cQED device, a superconducting qubit is capacitively coupled to a superconducting resonator resulting in coherent quantum behavior of the qubit when it interacts with photons inside the resonator. It has been shown theoretically that by forming a lattice of cQED elements, different quantum phases of photons will exist for dierent system parameters. In order to realize such a quantum simulator, the necessary experimental foundation must rst be developed. Here experimental eorts were focused on addressing two primary issues: 1) designing and fabricating low disorder lattices that are readily available to incorporate superconducting qubits, and 2) developing new measurement tools and techniques that can be used to characterize large lattices, and probe the predicted quantum phases within the lattice. Three experiments addressing these issues were performed. In the rst experiment a Kagome lattice of transmission line resonators was designed and fabricated, and a comprehensive study on the effects of random disorder in the lattice demonstrated that disorder was dependent on the resonator geometry. Subsequently a cryogenic 3-axis scanning stage was developed and the operation of the scanning stage was demonstrated in the final two experiments. The rst scanning experiment was conducted on a 49 site Kagome lattice, where a sapphire defect was used to locally perturb each lattice site. This perturbative scanning probe microscopy provided a means to measure the distribution of photon modes throughout the entire lattice. The second scanning experiment was performed on a single transmission line resonator where a transmon qubit was fabricated on a separate substrate, mounted to the tip of the scanning stage and coupled to the resonator. Here the coupling strength of the qubit to the resonator was mapped out demonstrating strong coupling over a wide scanning range, thus indicating the potential for a scanning qubit to be used as a local quantum probe.
Microwave photons inside lattices of coupled resonators and superconducting qubits can exhibit surprising matterlike behavior.Realizing such open-system quantum simulators presents an experimental challenge and requires new tools and measurement techniques.Here, we introduce scanning defect microscopy as one such tool and illustrate its use in mapping the normal-mode structure of microwave photons inside a 49-site kagome lattice of coplanar waveguide resonators.Scanning is accomplished by moving a probe equipped with a sapphire tip across the lattice.This locally perturbs resonator frequencies and induces shifts of the lattice resonance frequencies, which we determine by measuring the transmission spectrum.From the magnitude of mode shifts, we can reconstruct photon field amplitudes at each lattice site and thus create spatial images of the photon-lattice normal modes.
Microwave photons inside lattices of coupled resonators and superconducting qubits can exhibit surprising matterlike behavior.Realizing such open-system quantum simulators presents an experimental challenge and requires new tools and measurement techniques.Here, we introduce scanning defect microscopy as one such tool and illustrate its use in mapping the normal-mode structure of microwave photons inside a 49-site kagome lattice of coplanar waveguide resonators.Scanning is accomplished by moving a probe equipped with a sapphire tip across the lattice.This locally perturbs resonator frequencies and induces shifts of the lattice resonance frequencies, which we determine by measuring the transmission spectrum.From the magnitude of mode shifts, we can reconstruct photon field amplitudes at each lattice site and thus create spatial images of the photon-lattice normal modes.
In a quantum computer, the information carriers, which are bits in ordinary computers, are implemented as devices that exhibit coherent superpositions of physical states and entanglement. Such components, known as quantum bits or qubits, can be realized with various different types of two-state quantum systems. Quantum computers will be built for computational speed, with hoped for applications especially in cryptography and in other tasks where classical computers remain inefficient. Circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) is a quantum-computer architecture which employs superconducting electronic components and microwave photon fields as building blocks. Compared to cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED), where atoms are trapped in physical cavities, cQED is more attractive in that its qubits are tunable and conveniently integrable with the electronics already in use. This architecture has shown some of the most promising qubit designs, despite their coherence times reaching tens of microseconds, are still below the state of the art with spin qubits, which reach milliseconds. Coherence times are historically the most relevant parameters describing the fitness of a qubit, although these days not necessarily the limiting factor. This thesis presents a comprehensive set of theoretical and experimental methods for measuring the characteristic parameters of superconducting qubits. We especially study transmission-line-shunted plasma oscillation qubits, or transmons, and presents experimental results for a single sample. Transmon capacitively couples a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) with a coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonator, often with added frequency tunability utilizing an external magnet. The number of superconducting charge carriers tunnelled through a junction in the SQUID are used as qubit degrees of freedom. Readout of the qubit state is carried out by measuring transmission through the CPW. A cryogenic setup is employed with measurement and driving pulses delivered from microwave sources. Steady-state spectroscopy is employed to determine the resonance frequencies of the qubit and the resonator, qubit-resonator coupling constants, and the energy parameters of the qubit. Pulse-modulated measurements are employed to determine the coherence times of the qubit. The related analysis- and simulation programs and scripts are collected togithub.com/patomaki.
One of the key elements in circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) is the superconducting microwave resonator, which can enable strong coupling to and between nanoscale quantum systems, and as a result has emerged as an essential tool for both quantum information and quantum sensing. In this thesis, I will discuss new applications of superconducting resonators in both of these fields, which illustrates how quantum information and quantum sensing can be strongly tied together. As the field of quantum information continues to grow, various platforms for realizing a quantum computer have been proposed. One attractive platform is to control and manipulate the spin of an electron to form spin qubits, which have demonstrated a long coherence time, weak coupling to the environment, and high fidelity single- and two-qubit gates. However, scaling beyond two qubits has proven challenging, as has incorporating long-range coupling, although both are crucial for making spin qubits a scalable quantum computing platform. The confinement of electromagnetic fields in superconducting resonators enables strong coupling to small systems, such as the single electrons of a spin qubit. In the first part of this thesis, I will describe how a singlet-triplet spin qubit coupled to a high-impedance superconducting resonator constitutes a promising architecture for mediating long-ranged interactions based on a longitudinal coupling between the resonator and qubit. I will discuss the technical developments needed to successfully implement this novel type of interaction in a hybrid spin qubit-resonator device. This type of interaction has several advantages over the more commonly studied transverse coupling scheme: it does not require careful tuning of the qubit frequency to match that of the resonator, which facilitates scaling to a large number of qubits, and also avoids the loss of coherence, which is inevitable in resonant coupling. This type of interaction therefore opens promising paths for generating high-fidelity long-ranged two-qubit coupling by employing superconducting microwave resonators. By adapting techniques used in quantum information, we have also developed a new technique in quantum sensing, where we employ superconducting resonators as a probe of quantum materials such as mesoscopic systems, two-dimensional materials, and heterostructures, which are otherwise challenging to experimentally access with conventional techniques. In the second part of my thesis, I will discuss how implementing cQED techniques from quantum information allows us to probe the symmetry of the order parameter in unconventional superconductors. Unconventional superconductors are not readily available, and we therefore study an engineered system that comprises of interfacing a ferromagnet and superconductor, in which unconventional pairing can be induced into the ferromagnet. This platform allows us to simultaneously excite spin waves, a collective excitation of spins, in the ferromagnet, which opens new directions for studying interactions between coherently coupled magnons (quanta of spin waves) and unconventional superconducting states. Finally, by applying the same technique to a two-dimensional (2D) superconductor, tungsten ditelluride, we leverage this platform in an attempt to study the order parameter of its intrinsic superconducting phase. The nature of the order parameter in this material remains an open question, as both topological and superconducting phases can exist, possibly simultaneously. This work thus demonstrates a unique use of superconducting resonators beyond quantum information applications.
Circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED), exemplified by a coupled system of a superconducting qubit and a microwave cavity, is a powerful framework for the quantum control and measurement of macroscopic quantum states in solid-state circuits. Quantum circuits based on superconducting qubits have emerged as one of the leading platforms in the pursuit of fault-tolerant quantum computing. Despite significant progress in extending qubit lifetimes, refining experimental protocols, and scaling up quantum processors, errors arising from the control and measurement of superconducting qubits continue to hinder the realization of a universal quantum computer. To investigate the error mechanisms for state-of-the-art qubits, we realize long-lived superconducting transmon qubits that exhibit fluctuating lifetimes, with an average of 0.2 ms and a maximum exceeding 0.4 ms. We then investigate their dominant error mechanism. By introducing novel time-resolved error measurements that are synchronized with the operation of the pulse tube cooler in a dilution refrigerator, we find that mechanical vibrations from the pulse tube induce nonequilibrium dynamics in highly coherent qubits, leading to their correlated bit-flip errors. Our findings not only deepen our understanding of qubit error mechanisms but also provide valuable insights into potential error-mitigation strategies for achieving fault tolerance by decoupling superconducting qubits from their mechanical environments. We also present a novel scheme for operating a cQED system in a regime where the cavity is largely displaced. We find that a qubit drive at the bare cavity frequency can effectively displace the cavity field while minimizing the cavity-drive-induced dephasing and the ac Stark shift. Furthermore, we demonstrate that standard cQED protocols, such as qubit control, readout, and cavity single-photon generation, remain compatible with largely displaced cavity fields, even beyond the critical photon number. These findings open new pathways for exploring cQED dynamics in large-photon-number regimes, including the study of nonlinear phenomena in microwave cavities, the saturation of two-level system baths for extending the coherence of microwave quantum states, and the acceleration of the dispersive readout. Finally, mechanical resonators have emerged as integral components in quantum computing for storing and transducing quantum information. Low-frequency mechanical resonators, with extremely low energy dissipation rates, are particularly interesting for extending the lifetimes of stored quantum information. However, integrating low-frequency mechanical resonators with qubits is challenging because their small energy gaps make coherent energy exchange and ground-state preparation difficult. In this thesis, we report the first steps towards the characterization of a hybrid quantum device, consisting of a Transmon qubit and a circuit optomechanical system, both coupled to a 3D microwave cavity.
We assess experimentally the suitability of coupled-transmission-line resonators for studies of quantum phase transitions of light. We have measured devices with low photon hopping rates $t/2\ensuremath{\pi}=0.8$ MHz to quantify disorder in individual cavity frequencies. The observed disorder is consistent with small imperfections in fabrication. We studied the dependence of the disorder on transmission-line geometry and used our results to fabricate devices with disorder less than two parts in 104. The normal-mode spectrum of devices with a high photon hopping rate $t/2\ensuremath{\pi}=31$ MHz shows little effect of disorder, rendering resonator arrays a good backbone for the study of condensed-matter physics with photons.