Noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers (NISQ) have demonstrated superior performance compared to conventional computing schemes. Nonetheless, errors associated with two-qubit entangling gates remain a substantial obstacle in fully harnessing the potential of current superconducting quantum computers. The achievement of quantum computation and quantum information processing critically depends on the presence of entangled states. These states are indispensable for quantum computers to surpass classical computers in terms of computational power. This paper presents a comprehensive characterization of a two-qubit entangling gate, known as Dagwood Bumstead (DB) gate, to investigate the challenges posed by errors in the DB gate on NISQ devices. Firstly, we propose a scheme for the realization of the DB gate using two capacitively coupled Josephson Superconducting qubits, based on the experimental setup carried out in Bialczak et al. (2010). The gate’s performance is fully described through quantum process tomography (QPT) and quantum state tomography (QST) experiments conducted in three different environments: noisy, noiseless, and on a real IBM quantum computer. The process fidelity of the DB gate is measured to be 0.8069705, and the state fidelity is determined to be 0.8858750. This study offers valuable insights into the performance of the DB gate on a NISQ device, showcasing its potential for executing intricate algorithms and operations on an authentic quantum computer.
In state-of-the-art quantum computing platforms, including superconducting qubits and trapped ions, imperfections in the two-qubit entangling gates are the dominant contributions of error to systemwide performance. Recently, a novel two-qubit parametric gate was proposed and demonstrated with superconducting transmon qubits. This gate is activated through rf modulation of the transmon frequency and can be operated at an amplitude where the performance is first-order insensitive to flux noise. In this work we experimentally validate the existence of this ac sweet spot and demonstrate its dependence on white-noise power from room-temperature electronics. With these factors in place, we observe entangling-gate fidelity with coherence-limited performance. An ensemble of repeated observations has a median fidelity of 98.8%, with roughly 10% of observations above 99%.
A possible building block for a scalable quantum computer has recently been demonstrated [Mariantoni et al., Science 334, 61 (2011)]. This architecture consists of superconducting qubits capacitively coupled both to individual memory resonators as well as a common bus. In this work we study a natural primitive entangling gate for this and related resonator-based architectures, which consists of a controlled-${\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{z}$ (cz) operation between a qubit and the bus. The cz gate is implemented with the aid of the noncomputational qubit $|2\ensuremath{\rangle}$ state [Strauch et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 167005 (2003)]. Assuming phase or transmon qubits with 300 MHz anharmonicity, we show that by using only low frequency qubit-bias control it is possible to implement the qubit-bus cz gate with 99.9
(99.99
) fidelity in about
17ns (
23ns) with a realistic two-parameter pulse profile, plus two auxiliary
z rotations. The fidelity measure we refer to here is a state-averaged intrinsic process fidelity, which does not include any effects of noise or decoherence. These results apply to a multiqubit device that includes strongly coupled memory resonators. We investigate the performance of the qubit-bus cz gate as a function of qubit anharmonicity, identify the dominant intrinsic error mechanism and derive an associated fidelity estimator, quantify the pulse shape sensitivity and precision requirements, simulate qubit-qubit cz gates that are mediated by the bus resonator, and also attempt a global optimization of system parameters including resonator frequencies and couplings. Our results are relevant for a wide range of superconducting hardware designs that incorporate resonators and suggest that it should be possible to demonstrate a
99.9 cz gate with existing transmon qubits, which would constitute an important step towards the development of an error-corrected superconducting quantum computer.