Analyzing weak microwave signals in the GHz regime is a challenging task if the signal level is very low and the photon energy widely undefined. A superconducting qubit can detect signals in the low photon regime, but due to its discrete level structure, it is only sensitive to photons of certain energies. With a multilevel quantum system (qudit) in contrast, the unknown signal frequency and amplitude can be deduced from the higher level ac Stark shift. The measurement accuracy is given by the signal amplitude, its detuning from the discrete qudit energy level structure, and the anharmonicity. We demonstrate an energy sensitivity in the order of ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ with a measurement range of more than
1GHz. Here, using a transmon qubit, we experimentally observe shifts in the transition frequencies involving up to three excited levels. These shifts are in good agreement with an analytic circuit model and master equation simulations. For large detunings, we find the shifts to scale linearly with the power of the applied microwave drive. Exploiting the effect, we demonstrated a power meter which makes it possible to characterize the microwave transmission from source to sample.
Large scale quantum computing motivates the invention of two-qubit gate schemes that not only maximize the gate fidelity but also draw minimal resources. In the case of superconducting qubits, the weak anharmonicity of transmons imposes profound constraints on the gate design, leading to increased complexity of devices and control protocols. Here we demonstrate a resource-efficient control over the interaction of strongly-anharmonic fluxonium qubits. Namely, applying an off-resonant drive to noncomputational transitions in a pair of capacitively-coupled fluxoniums induces a
ZZ interaction due to unequal ac Stark shifts of the computational levels. With a continuous choice of frequency and amplitude, the drive can either cancel the static
ZZ term or increase it by an order of magnitude to enable a controlled-phase (CP) gate with an arbitrary programmed phase shift. The cross-entropy benchmarking of these non-Clifford operations yields a sub
1 error, limited solely by incoherent processes. Our result demonstrates the advantages of strongly-anharmonic circuits over transmons in designing the next generation of quantum processors.