The promise of quantum information technology hinges on the ability to control large numbers of qubits with high-fidelity. Quantum dots define a promising platform due to their compatibility with semiconductor manufacturing. Moreover, high-fidelity operations above 99.9% have been realized with individual qubits, though their performance has been limited to 98.67% when driving two qubits simultaneously. Here we present single-qubit randomized benchmarking in a two-dimensional array of spin qubits, for one, two and four simultaneously driven qubits. We find that by carefully tuning the qubit parameters, we achieve native gate fidelities of 99.9899(4)%, 99.904(4)% and 99.00(4)% respectively. We also find that cross talk with next-nearest neighbor pairs induces errors that can be imperceptible within the error margin, indicating that cross talk can be highly local. These characterizations of the single-qubit gate quality and the ability to operate simultaneously are crucial aspects for scaling up germanium based quantum information technology.
The promise of quantum information technology hinges on the ability to control large numbers of qubits with high-fidelity. Quantum dots define a promising platform due to their compatibility with semiconductor manufacturing. Moreover, high-fidelity operations above 99.9% have been realized with individual qubits, though their performance has been limited to 98.67% when driving two qubits simultaneously. Here we present single-qubit randomized benchmarking in a two-dimensional array of spin qubits, for one, two and four simultaneously driven qubits. We find that by carefully tuning the qubit parameters, we achieve native gate fidelities of 99.9899(4)%, 99.904(4)% and 99.00(4)% respectively. We also find that cross talk with next-nearest neighbor pairs induces errors that can be imperceptible within the error margin, indicating that cross talk can be highly local. These characterizations of the single-qubit gate quality and the ability to operate simultaneously are crucial aspects for scaling up germanium based quantum information technology.
Practical Quantum computing hinges on the ability to control large numbers of qubits with high fidelity. Quantum dots define a promising platform due to their compatibility with semiconductor manufacturing. Moreover, high-fidelity operations above 99.9% have been realized with individual qubits, though their performance has been limited to 98.67% when driving two qubits simultaneously. Here we present single-qubit randomized benchmarking in a two-dimensional array of spin qubits, finding native gate fidelities as high as 99.992(1)%. Furthermore, we benchmark single qubit gate performance while simultaneously driving two and four qubits, utilizing a novel benchmarking technique called N-copy randomized benchmarking, designed for simple experimental implementation and accurate simultaneous gate fidelity estimation. We find two- and four-copy randomized benchmarking fidelities of 99.905(8)% and 99.34(4)% respectively, and that next-nearest neighbor pairs are highly robust to cross-talk errors. These characterizations of single-qubit gate quality are crucial for scaling up quantum information technology.
Abstract Silicon spin qubits offer a promising path to scalable quantum computing due to their compatibility with industrial semiconductor manufacturing. A key requirement for scaling quantum processors is the ability to perform high-fidelity operations in parallel across many qubits. However, simultaneous control remains a major challenge in silicon devices, as fidelities typically degrade under parallel operation. Here we identify microwave-drive-induced a.c.-Stark shifts as the dominant source of this degradation in a five-qubit silicon spin array. We address this by introducing a scalable mitigation protocol based solely on pairwise phase calibrations. Using tailored control pulses on a shared control line, we achieve primitive X and Y gate fidelities well above 99.99% for each qubit individually, with some approaching 99.999%. Furthermore, these fidelities are preserved above 99.99% during simultaneous operation of up to three qubits. During parallel five-qubit operation, fidelities remain above the widely targeted fault-tolerant threshold of 99.9%. By maintaining high-fidelity control during simultaneous operation, shared qubit-control lines can support the development of large-scale semiconductor quantum processors.
Abstract High-fidelity control of quantum bits is paramount for the reliable execution of quantum algorithms and for achieving fault tolerance—the ability to correct errors faster than they occur 1 . The central requirement for fault tolerance is expressed in terms of an error threshold. Whereas the actual threshold depends on many details, a common target is the approximately 1% error threshold of the well-known surface code 2,3 . Reaching two-qubit gate fidelities above 99% has been a long-standing major goal for semiconductor spin qubits. These qubits are promising for scaling, as they can leverage advanced semiconductor technology 4 . Here we report a spin-based quantum processor in silicon with single-qubit and two-qubit gate fidelities, all of which are above 99.5%, extracted from gate-set tomography. The average single-qubit gate fidelities remain above 99% when including crosstalk and idling errors on the neighbouring qubit. Using this high-fidelity gate set, we execute the demanding task of calculating molecular ground-state energies using a variational quantum eigensolver algorithm 5 . Having surpassed the 99% barrier for the two-qubit gate fidelity, semiconductor qubits are well positioned on the path to fault tolerance and to possible applications in the era of noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.
Fault-tolerant quantum computation requires increasing the qubit count while maintaining high performance and connectivity. Semiconductor qubits have demonstrated high-fidelity operation, but growing the system size at sufficient connectivity remains challenging, such that scaling mainly occurred in one spatial direction to preserve access for control lines in the other. Here, we realise an approach that relaxes the requirements on fabrication and demonstrate a 6$\times6quantumdotarray,definedbyasharedbarriergateandindividualplungergates.Thequantumdotsaretunedthroughcoherentspinshuttlingoverdistancesupto5.2umintoasparseconfigurationof10simultaneouslyoperatedqubits,leavingspaceforshuttlingconnections.Wereducecrosstalkby42\times$ in this separated regime, enabling high-fidelity simultaneous single-qubit control, while control-Z operations can be implemented through shuttling and plunger-only control. These results promise high-connectivity quantum circuits, enabled by scaling to two-dimensional geometries and exploiting shuttling.
Abstract Universal quantum computation will require qubit technology based on a scalable platform1, together with quantum error correction protocols that place strict limits on the maximum infidelities for one- and two-qubit gate operations2, 3. Although various qubit systems have shown high fidelities at the one-qubit level4–10, the only solid-state qubits manufactured using standard lithographic techniques that have demonstrated two-qubit fidelities near the fault-tolerance threshold6 have been in superconductor systems. Silicon-based quantum dot qubits are also amenable to large-scale fabrication and can achieve high single-qubit gate fidelities (exceeding 99.9 per cent) using isotopically enriched silicon11, 12. Two-qubit gates have now been demonstrated in a number of systems13–15, but as yet an accurate assessment of their fidelities using Clifford-based randomized benchmarking, which uses sequences of randomly chosen gates to measure the error, has not been achieved. Here, for qubits encoded on the electron spin states of gate-defined quantum dots, we demonstrate Bell state tomography with fidelities ranging from 80 to 89 per cent, and two-qubit randomized benchmarking with an average Clifford gate fidelity of 94.7 per cent and an average controlled-rotation fidelity of 98 per cent. These fidelities are found to be limited by the relatively long gate times used here compared with the decoherence times of the qubits. Silicon qubit designs employing fast gate operations with high Rabi frequencies16, 17, together with advanced pulsing techniques18, should therefore enable much higher fidelities in the near future.
The growing interest in quantum computers has triggered various approaches for the realization of a large-scale quantum processor that can eventually outperform classical high-performance computers. Quantum computers are attracting increasing attention for their potential to enormously accelerate the simulation of quantum systems and the solution of optimization problems, promising an immense impact, particularly in fields such as chemistry, medicine, and cybersecurity. Although it is still a long way to a practical quantum device, the progress over the last decades has shown encouraging results for a so far limited number of quantum bits, or qubits for short, which represent the computational units of the processor. One promising platform for the implementation of qubits is the spin of charge carriers in semiconductor quantum dots. Especially the use of purified silicon as a host material has significantly improved the performance of quantum operations. Advanced fabrication techniques from the established semiconductor industry in principle allow for the manufacturing of a large number of qubits on a small chip, making them specifically competitive from the perspective of scalability. In this thesis, we investigate challenges for electron spin qubits, particularly in the context of scaling to large qubit arrays for quantum computation. We evaluate the performance of quantum gates, present error mitigation strategies, and propose new quantum operations for two particular spin qubit implementations. In a dense array of Loss-DiVincenzo spin qubits on a chip, quantum information can be electrically controlled by microwave pulses. For neighboring qubits, capacitive couplings of nearby electrodes lead to crosstalk that affects the quantum computation. The first examination in this thesis addresses the effect of crosstalk on idling and operating spin qubits due to an interfering microwave drive. After the analysis and characterization of the performance, we suggest mitigation protocols for different constellations of important quantum gates, which can be easily implemented experimentally. We further show how to reduce crosstalk in a two-qubit gate using an asymmetric driving scheme, resulting in an enormous improvement of the gate performance, and may be used to generally overcome the obstacle of crosstalk. An additional source of errors in spin qubit registers originates from the finite residual exchange interaction between neighboring qubits. It arises due to a finite overlap of the electron wave functions and is caused by the limited speed at which the applied voltages can be controlled. We evaluate the fidelity of doing quantum operations under these circumstances with a varying number of neighboring qubits and present robust mitigation schemes with a decent performance also in the presence of noise. Besides crosstalk, another crucial observation in experiments using microwaves is the heating caused by the delivery of high-power radio frequency pulses to the quantum chip and results in a change of the qubit properties. We therefore investigate the impact of phonons on the energy levels in spin qubits to identify a temperature-dependent correction to the qubit state splitting. As microwave pulses are associated with potential errors, exchange-only qubits represent a promising alternative to achieve universal quantum computation only using baseband control. Therefore, we shift our focus towards exchange-only qubits and outline the main error sources in these systems, including residual exchange interactions between spins, charge noise from the applied voltages, and magnetic fluctuations in the material. A consequential complication of this implementation is that the quantum information can leak out of the qubit states. This effect, however, can be reduced in the presence of a finite magnetic field, as we will demonstrate in this thesis. The gate construction for exchange-only qubits usually requires more pulse steps than in the previous qubit type. Nevertheless, if exchange interactions are switched on simultaneously, this can result in faster quantum gates, as we demonstrate in this thesis. Especially the discovery of a quantum operation that introduces relative phases between computational and leakage states can be of interest for the construction of two-qubit gates and will be discussed in an example for a special operation space.