I discuss the design, fabrication and measurement at millikelvin-temperatures of Al/AlO
x/Al Josephson junction-based transmon qubits coupled to superconducting thin-film lumped element microwave resonators made of aluminum on sapphire. The resonators had a center frequency of around
6GHz, and a total quality factor ranging from 15,000 to 70,000 for the various devices. The area of the transmon junctions was about
150nm×150nm and with Josephson energy
EJ such that
10GHz≤EJ/h≤30GHz. The charging energy of the transmons arising mostly from the large interdigital shunt capacitance, was
Ec/h≈300MHz. I present microwave spectroscopy of the devices in the strongly dispersive regime of circuit quantum electrodynamics. In this limit the ac Stark shift due to a single photon in the resonator is greater than the linewidth of the qubit transition. When the resonator is driven coherently using a coupler tone, the transmon spectrum reveals individual ``photon number'' peaks, each corresponding to a single additional photon in the resonator. Using a weighted average of the peak heights in the qubit spectrum, I calculated the average number of photons
nˉ in the resonator. I also observed a nonlinear variation of
nˉ with the applied power of the coupler tone
Prf. I studied this nonlinearity using numerical simulations and found good qualitative agreement with data. In the absence of a coherent drive on the resonator, a thermal population of
5.474GHz photons in the resonator, at an effective temperature of
120mK resulted in a weak
n=1 thermal photon peak in the qubit spectrum. In the presence of independent coupler and probe tones, the
n=1 thermal photon peak revealed an Autler-Townes splitting. The observed effect was explained accurately using the four lowest levels of the dispersively dressed Jaynes-Cummings transmon-resonator system, and numerical simulations of the steady-state master equation for the coupled system. I also present time-domain measurements on transmons coupled to lumped-element resonators. From
T1 and Rabi oscillation measurements, I found that my early transmon devices (called design LEv5) had lifetimes (
T1∼1μs) limited by strong coupling to the
50Ω transmission line. This coupling was characterized by the the rate of change of the Rabi oscillation frequency with the change in the drive voltage (
dfRabi/dV) -- also termed the Rabi coupling to the drive. I studied the design of the transmon-resonator system using circuit analysis and microwave simulations with the aim being to reduce the Rabi coupling to the drive. By increasing the resonance frequency of the resonator
ωr/2π from 5.4
GHz to 7.2
GHz, lowering the coupling of the resonator to the transmission line and thereby increasing the external quality factor
Qe from 20,000 to 70,000, and reducing the transmon-resonator coupling
g/2π from 70
MHz to 40
MHz, I reduced the Rabi coupling to the drive by an order of magnitude (
∼ factor of 20). The
T1∼4μs of devices in the new design (LEv6) was longer than that of the early devices, but still much shorter than the lifetimes predicted from Rabi coupling, suggesting the presence of alternative sources of noise causing qubit relaxation. Microwave simulations and circuit analysis in the presence of a dielectric loss tangent
tanδ≃5×10−6 agree reasonably well with the measured
T1 values, suggesting that surface dielectric loss may be causing relaxation of transmons in the new designs.
I describe my contributions towards a hybrid quantum system that would have coupled 87Rb atoms to a superconducting device. I first discuss my work coupling an optical fiber to a translatable thin-film LC lumped-element superconducting Al microwave resonator operating at 100 mK in a dilution refrigerator. The LC resonators had resonance frequencies f0 of 6.15 GHz, quality factors Q of 1.5 x 105 to 6.5 x 105 at high powers, and were mounted inside a superconducting aluminum 3D cavity with a resonance frequency of 7.5 GHz and Q of 8 x 103. An optical microfiber (60 µm diameter) passed through a hole in the 3D cavity near the LC resonator. The 3D cavity was mounted on an x-z attocube-translation stage that allowed the LC resonator to be moved relative to the fiber. The resonator’s f0 and Q were affected both by the fiber dielectric perturbing the resonator’s electric field and from scattered light from the fiber. I measured both effects as a function of fiber-resonator position. I modeled the resonator’s optical response by accounting for optical production, recombination, and diffusion of quasiparticles and the non-uniform position-dependent illumination of the resonator. Using the model, I extracted key parameters describing quasiparticles in the resonator. The hybrid quantum system requires the 87Rb and LC resonator resonance to be tuned to the same frequency. I describe our LC resonator tuning method which moves a superconducting Al pin into the resonator’s electric field, decreasing the resonator capacitance and increasing its resonance frequency up to 137 MHz. This was done at 15 mK using an attocube translation stage. I also investigated two-level system (TLS) defects in an LC resonator by applying a dc voltage. I describe a model in which the TLS causes a capacitive perturbation to the resonator rather than the ‘standard’ electric-dipole coupling model. I use this model of a capacitive TLS or cTLS, to describe intermittent telegraph noise measured in the transmission S21 through the resonator. I measured shifts in f0 of more than 6 kHz corresponding to a cTLS fluctuating its capacitance contribution by 430 zF.
Metamaterial resonant structures made from arrays of superconducting lumped-circuit elements can exhibit microwave-mode spectra with left-handed dispersion for the standing-wave resonances, resulting in a high density of modes in the same frequency range where superconducting qubits are typically operated, as well as a bandgap at lower frequencies that extends down to dc. Using this regime for multimode circuit quantum electrodynamics, we perform a series of measurements of such a superconducting metamaterial resonator coupled to a flux-tunable transmon qubit. Through microwave measurements of the metamaterial, we observe the coupling of the qubit to each of the modes that it passes through. Using a separate readout resonator, we probe the qubit dispersively and characterize the qubit energy relaxation as a function of frequency, which is strongly affected by the Purcell effect in the presence of the dense mode spectrum. Additionally, we investigate the ac Stark shift of the qubit as the photon number in the various metamaterial modes is varied. Through numerical simulations, we explore designs based on this scheme with enhanced coupling so that the coupling energy between the qubit and the metamaterial modes can exceed the intermode spacing in future devices with achievable circuit parameters. The ability to tailor the dense mode spectrum through the choice of circuit parameters and manipulate the photonic state of the metamaterial through interactions with qubits makes this a promising platform for analog quantum simulation with microwave photons and quantum memories.
We study the system where a superconducting flux qubit is capacitively coupled to an LC resonator. In three devices with different coupling capacitance, the magnitude of the dispersive shift is enhanced by the third level of the qubit and quantitatively agrees with the theory. We show by numerical calculation that the capacitive coupling plays an essential role for the enhancement in the dispersive shift. We investigate the coherence properties in two of these devices, which are in the strong-dispersive regime, and show that the qubit energy relaxation is currently not limited by the coupling. We also observe the discrete ac-Stark effect, a hallmark of the strong-dispersive regime, in accordance with the theory.
We analyze the dynamics of a qubit-resonator system coupled with a thermal bath and external electromagnetic fields. Using the evolution equations for the set of Heisenberg operators that describe the whole system, we derive an expression for the resonator field, that includes the resonator-drive, the resonator-bath, and resonator-qubit interactions. The renormalization of the resonator frequency, caused by the qubit-resonator interaction, is accounted for. Using the solutions for the resonator field, we derive the equation that describes the qubit dynamics. The dependence of the qubit evolution during the measurement time on the fidelity of a single-shot measurement is studied. The relation between the fidelity and measurement time is shown explicitly. We proposed a novel adiabatic method for the phase qubit measurement. The method utilizes a low-frequency, quasi-classical resonator inductively coupled to the qubit. The resonator modulates the qubit energy, and the back reaction of the qubit causes a shift in the phase of the resonator. The resonator phase shift can be used to determine the qubit state. We have simulated this measurement taking into the account the energy levels outside the phase qubit manifold. We have shown that, for qubit frequencies in the range of 8-12GHZ, a resonator frequency of 500 MHz and a measurement time of 100 ns, the phase difference between the two qubit states is greater than 0.2 rad. This phase difference exceeds the measurement uncertainty, and can be detected using a classical phase-meter. A fidelity of 0.9999 can be achieved for a relaxation time of 0.5 ms. We also model and simulate a microstrip-SQUID amplifier of frequency about 500 MHz, which could be used to amplify the resonator oscillations in the phase qubit adiabatic measurement. The voltage gain and the amplifier noise temperature are calculated. We simulate the preparation of a generalized Bell state and compute the relaxation times required for achieving high fidelities. We consider two capacitively coupled phase qubits similar to that used in the experimental work of R. Bialczak et al. (Nature Physics, 6, 409, 2010). The Bell state was created using a NOT gate and a universal entangling gate. We solved the equation of motion for the density matrix with the Bloch relaxation times, T{sub 1} and T{sub 2}. For every qubit we took into consideration all the states in the shallow well including the states outside the qubit manifold. Also we took into consideration unwanted interaction between the qubits during the application of the NOT gate. The NOT gate was implemented using a Gaussian pulse assuming the frequency difference between the two qubits is 200 MHz. An entangling gate was implemented reducing this frequency difference to zero. We have found the optimal parameters for the Gaussian pulse and the optimal duration for the entangling gate. We have shown that the maximum fidelity of 0.99 can be achieved for the minimum relaxation time, T{sub 1} = 1.2 {micro}s, if T{sub 2} = 2T{sub 1}. By slightly increasing the required value of T{sub 1}, one can sharply reduce the required value for T{sub 2}.