The leading approach to attempt quantum computing is based on superconductors. In particular, Circuit Quantum Electrodynamic systems (circuit QED) are used to couple photons stored in a microwave resonator to a quantum bit (qubit), allowing the qubit to be controlled and measured. A lumped element parallel RLC circuit will be used to model a superconducting coplanar microwave resonator, in order to gain an intuitive understanding of how various parameters affect its electromagnetic properties, and how they can be optimised to provide desired specifications. Resonator quality factors will also be realised, which describe the effects of coupling the microwave resonator to external input/output transmission lines. The qubit is generated by a superconducting capacitively shunted Josephson Junction; the transmon, and its operation and non-linear behaviour will be discussed in this report. The transmon is integrated with a microwave resonator to generate the circuit QED system, and the derivation of the systems Hamiltonian will allow us to determine the equations describing the behaviour of the system, and therefore how it may be controlled and measured. The Bloch sphere will be introduced, which provides a useful geometric representation of the state space of a two-level quantum system. Mapping the derived Hamiltonian to the time-dependent Schrodinger equation facilitates realisation of control mechanisms of the qubit based on rotations about the Bloch sphere.
The leading approach to attempt quantum computing is based on superconductors. In particular, Circuit Quantum Electrodynamic systems (circuit QED) are used to couple photons stored in a microwave resonator to a quantum bit (qubit), allowing the qubit to be controlled and measured. A lumped element parallel RLC circuit will be used to model a superconducting coplanar microwave resonator, in order to gain an intuitive understanding of how various parameters affect its electromagnetic properties, and how they can be optimised to provide desired specifications. Resonator quality factors will also be realised, which describe the effects of coupling the microwave resonator to external input/output transmission lines. The qubit is generated by a superconducting capacitively shunted Josephson Junction; the transmon, and its operation and non-linear behaviour will be discussed in this report. The transmon is integrated with a microwave resonator to generate the circuit QED system, and the derivation of the systems Hamiltonian will allow us to determine the equations describing the behaviour of the system, and therefore how it may be controlled and measured. The Bloch sphere will be introduced, which provides a useful geometric representation of the state space of a two-level quantum system. Mapping the derived Hamiltonian to the time-dependent Schrodinger equation facilitates realisation of control mechanisms of the qubit based on rotations about the Bloch sphere.
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.
Superconducting qubits are a promising technology for building a scalable quantum computer. An important architecture employed in the field is called Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics (circuit QED), where such qubits are combined with high quality microwave cavities to study the interaction between artificial atoms and single microwave photons. The ultra-strong coupling achieved in these systems allows for control and readout of the quantum state of qubits to perform quantum information processing. The work on circuit QED performed in this thesis consisted of realizing an experimental setup for qubit experiments in a new laboratory, investigating the coherence and decay of higher energy levels of superconducting transmon qubits and finally demonstrating a novel coaxial form of circuit QED. Designing and building a 3D circuit QED setup involved the following main accomplishments: producing high quality 3D cavities; designing and installing the cryogenic microwave setup as well as the room temperature amplification and data acquisition circuitry; successfully developing a recipe for the fabrication of Josephson junctions; controlling and measuring superconducting 3D transmon qubits at 10mK. Several qubits were fully characterised and have shown coherence times of several microseconds and relaxation times up to 25μs. Superconducting qubits in fact possess higher energy levels that can provide significant computational advantages in quantum information applications. In experiments performed at MIT, preparation and control of the five lowest states of a transmon qubit was demonstrated, followed by an investigation of the phase coherence and decay dynamics of these higher energy levels. The decay was found to proceed mainly sequentially with relaxation times in excess of 20μs for all transitions. A direct measurement of the charge dispersion of these levels was performed to explore their characteristics of dephasing. This experiment was also reproduced on a 3D transmon fabricated and measured in Oxford, where due to a higher effective qubit temperature a multi-level decay model including thermal excitations was developed to explain the observed relaxation dynamics. Finally, a coaxial transmon, which we name the coaxmon, is presented and measured with a coaxial LC readout resonator and input/output coupling ports placed inline along the third dimension. This novel coaxial circuit QED architecture holds great promise for developing a scalable planar grid of qubits to build a quantum computer.
A quantum computer will use the properties of quantum physics to solve certain computational problems much faster than otherwise possible. One promising potential implementation is to use superconducting quantum bits in the circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) architecture. There, the low energy states of a nonlinear electronic oscillator are isolated and addressed as a qubit. These qubits are capacitively coupled to the modes of a microwave-frequency transmission line resonator which serves as a quantum communication bus. Microwave electrical pulses are applied to the resonator to manipulate or measure the qubit state. State control is calibrated using diagnostic sequences that expose systematic errors. Hybridization of the resonator with the qubit gives it a nonlinear response when driven strongly, useful for amplifying the measurement signal to enhance accuracy. Qubits coupled to the same bus may coherently interact with one another via the exchange of virtual photons. A two-qubit conditional phase gate mediated by this interaction can deterministically entangle its targets, and is used to generate two-qubit Bell states and three-qubit GHZ states. These three-qubit states are of particular interest because they redundantly encode quantum information. They are the basis of the quantum repetition code prototypical of more sophisticated schemes required for quantum computation. Using a three-qubit Toffoli gate, this code is demonstrated to autonomously correct either bit- or phase-flip errors. Despite observing the expected behavior, the overall fidelity is low because of decoherence. A superior implementation of cQED replaces the transmission-line resonator with a three-dimensional box mode, increasing lifetimes by an order of magnitude. In-situ qubit frequency control is enabled with control lines, which are used to fully characterize and control the system Hamiltonian.
We introduce a superconducting coplanar waveguide, in the form of a ring resonator, as a quantum bus for circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit QED). Due to its unique symmetry, the amplitude of the electromagnetic field inside is uniform along the resonator, which in principle leads to a location independent coupling between qubits and the resonator. For an experimental demonstration, we designed and fabricated a ring resonator capacitively coupled to two tunable Xmon superconducting qubits. We showed that nearly identical coupling was achieved between individual qubits and the resonator. In addition, the resonator was also used as a high quality quantum bus for generating Bell states between the qubits with a fidelity of F=98.6%, although an interference effect must be included for understanding the effective coupling between the two qubits. Our results suggest that ring resonators can be a useful addition to the toolbox of circuit QED.
We report our development on design, fabrication and characterization of various superconducting resonators for quantum device applications. The resonators are developed mainly for superconducting qubit implementation in circuit QED structure, but future application will include photon detectors such as microwave kinetic inductance detectors. First we designed and fabricated half-wavelength coplanar waveguide resonators with niobium thin film on a high resistive silicon wafer, with the fundamental frequencies in the range of 1 to 8 GHz. The loaded quality factors are controlled by the coupling capacitors, and the lower bound of the intrinsic quality factor was measured down to 7 mK in the dilution refrigerator. We have also designed quarter-wavelength resonators and lumped LC resonators coupled to a transmission line, and characterized multiple resonators in a single transmission line. For the 3D transmon qubit application, we designed and fabricated a rectangular box resonator with superconducting aluminum. The intrinsic quality factor of the box resonator exceeds three million at 7 mK. We will also present basic results on the integration of a transmon qubit in the superconducting resonator.
In the last two decades, the field of circuit quantum electrodynamics, that studies the interaction between superconducting qubits and 1-dimensional waveguides, has been of great interest. It provides a great potential to build quantum devices, which are important for quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum information. The restriction to one dimension decreases losses and information can be transferred efficiently. Superconducting qubits are artificial atoms that consist of a non-linear Josephson element and work in the microwave regime. These superconducting qubits make on-chip tunable quantum experiments possible.In the appended paper, we investigate the spontaneous emission of an initially excited artificial atom (superconducting transmon qubit) which is capacitively coupled to a semi-infinite transmission line (atom in front of a mirror). We can choose the distance to the mirror arbitrarily so the interaction with the reflected field is delayed if the qubit is far away from the mirror and we have to take time-delay effects into account. We derive equations of motion for the transmon by circuit quantization and solve them semi-classically. In this thesis we give an introduction to circuit quantization, transmission lines and superconducting qubits. Then we discuss the methods and results of the appended paper which are based on the topics introduced.