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IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE)

Power dependent dynamics of the 2nd excited state of a Transmon qubit

JeaKyung Choi, Heyok Hwang, Eunseong Kim

Published Sep 1, 2022• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A qubit, the quantum counterpart of the classical binary digit, can be constructed based on a system with two possible quantum states. For instance, superconducting circuits have been employed to construct an artificial atom in which ground and excited states are used for two quantum states. The anharmonicity of an artificial atom distinguishes the higher-order excited states from two possible quantum states, although they can interact with the cavity as well. The interaction can be important when a large number of photons are allowed in the cavity and results in a nonlinear effect on a Transmon-cavity system. We studied power-dependent nonlinear behaviors of a Transmon-cavity system. The system exhibits dramatic shifts from a dispersive coupling at a low power regime to punch-out behaviors at high powers. This nonlinearity provides us high fidelity readouts for 2nd excited state as well as 1st excited state.[1]

DOI
10.1109/qce53715.2022.00136

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A qubit, the quantum counterpart of the classical binary digit, can be constructed based on a system with two possible quantum states. For instance, superconducting circuits have been employed to construct an artificial atom in which ground and excited states are used for two quantum states. The anharmonicity of an artificial atom distinguishes the higher-order excited states from two possible quantum states, although they can interact with the cavity as well. The interaction can be important when a large number of photons are allowed in the cavity and results in a nonlinear effect on a Transmon-cavity system. We studied power-dependent nonlinear behaviors of a Transmon-cavity system. The system exhibits dramatic shifts from a dispersive coupling at a low power regime to punch-out behaviors at high powers. This nonlinearity provides us high fidelity readouts for 2nd excited state as well as 1st excited state.[1]
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We investigate the decay dynamics of a three-level artificial atom, a superconducting transmon qubit, weakly coupled to a continuum of modes in a broadband, one-dimensional cavity. Using the resolvent formalism, we derive analytical expressions for the resonance frequency shifts and widths, which are then evaluated numerically for a Gaussian density of states. We identify two distinct dynamical regimes, differentiated by the ratio of the qubit's coupling strength to the continuum bandwidth. When this ratio is much less than one, the system exhibits a Markovian regime in which the resonance width is practically independent of energy within the continuum band. As the ratio increases, the system transitions to a non-Markovian regime where the resonance width becomes strongly energy-dependent. In this regime, the qubit interacts with the continuum faster than the continuum can erase the information from the qubit's past. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the coupling between the transmon's second level and its ground state significantly influences the decay dynamics of the third level. The interaction between these two levels opens a fast two-photon decay channel, which broadens the transmon's second level.
We demonstrate a qubit readout scheme that exploits the Jaynes-Cummings nonlinearity of a superconducting cavity coupled to transmon qubits. We find that, in the strongly driven dispersive regime of this system, there is the unexpected onset of a high-transmission "bright" state at a critical power which depends sensitively on the initial qubit state. A simple and robust measurement protocol exploiting this effect achieves a single-shot fidelity of 87% using a conventional sample design and experimental setup, and at least 61% fidelity to joint correlations of three qubits.
We develop an efficient numerical approach for simulating the high-power dispersive readout in circuit quantum electrodynamics. In the numerical simulations of the high-power readout, a large-amplitude coherent state induced in a cavity is an obstacle because many Fock states are required to describe such a state. We remove the large-amplitude coherent state from the numerical simulations by simulating the dynamics in a frame where the amplitude of the coherent state is almost absent. Using the developed method, we numerically simulate the high-power dispersive readout of the two-level system and the transmon. Our proposed method succeeds in producing reasonable behaviors of the high-power dispersive readout which can be deduced from the photon-number dependence of the cavity frequency: The high-power dispersive readout works in the two-level-system case while it does not work in the transmon case.
One of the most studied model systems in quantum optics is a two-level atom strongly coupled to a single mode of the electromagnetic field stored in a cavity, a research field named cavity quantum electrodynamics or CQED. CQED has recently received renewed attention due to its implementation with superconducting artificial atoms and coplanar resonators in the so-called circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) architecture. In cQED, the couplings can be much stronger than in CQED due to the design flexibility of superconducting circuits and to the enhanced field confinement in one-dimensional cavities. This enabled the realization of fundamental quantum physics and quantum information processing experiments with a degree of control comparable to that obtained in CQED. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the situation where the resonator to which the atom is coupled is made nonlinear with a Kerr-type nonlinearity, causing its energy levels to be nonequidistant. The system is then described by a nonlinear Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian. This considerably enriches the physics since a pumped nonlinear resonator displays bistability, parametric amplification, and squeezing. The interplay of strong coupling and these nonlinear effects constitutes a novel model system for quantum optics that can be implemented experimentally with superconducting circuits. This chapter is organized as follows. In a first section we present the system consisting of a superconducting Kerr nonlinear resonator strongly coupled to a transmon qubit. In the second section, we describe the response of the sole nonlinear resonator to an external drive. In the third section, we show how the resonator bistability can be used to perform a high-fidelity readout of the transmon qubit. In the last section, we investigate the quantum backaction exerted by the intracavity field on the qubit.
The fidelity and quantum nondemolition character of the dispersive readout in circuit QED are limited by unwanted transitions to highly excited states at specific photon numbers in the readout resonator. This observation can be explained by multiphoton resonances between computational states and highly excited states in strongly driven nonlinear systems, analogous to multiphoton ionization in atoms and molecules. In this work, we utilize the multilevel nature of high- E J / E C transmons to probe the excited-state dynamics induced by strong drives during readout. With up to ten resolvable states, we quantify the critical photon number of ionization, the resulting state after ionization, and the fraction of the population transferred to highly excited states. Moreover, using pulse shaping to control the photon number in the readout resonator in the high-power regime, we tune the adiabaticity of the transition and verify that transmon ionization is a Landau-Zener-type transition. We further extend these methods to a typical transmon with E J / E C ≈ 55 and probe the offset-charge dependence of ionization dynamics in a timed-resolved manner. Our experimental results agree well with the theoretical prediction from a semiclassical driven transmon model and may guide future exploration of strongly driven nonlinear oscillators.