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IEEE BiCMOS and Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuits and Technology Symposium (BCICTS)

A 13 GHz PA with Amplitude Modulation for Entanglement Generation in Multi-Qubit 171Yb+ Gates of an Ion-Trapped Quantum Computer

Peter Toth, Lasse Cordes, Вадим Іссаков

Published Oct 16, 2022• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This work presents a power amplifier (PA) for microwave-driven entanglement operation in ion-trap-based Ytterbium qubit gates. The design is optimized for a center frequency of 13 GHz with a 3 dB bandwidth of 6 GHz thereby fulfilling the requirements to drive the 12.6 GHz hyperfine transisiton in the electronic ground state of a171Yb+ion. The PA achieves a saturated output power of 14 dBm and a gain of 20 dB at the center frequency. Due to a tunable operating point it is possible to realize a power-efficient amplitude modulation allowing for a qubit-gate fidelity improvement. The presented circuit achieves a measured power-added-efficiency (PAE) of 28 %. Due to maintaining an electrically stable operation during operation-point changes, this circuit is highly suitable for analyzing the effect of various pulse envelopes on the gate fidelity. The proposed circuit is silicon-proven and fabricated in a 0.13 µm SiGe BiCMOS process covering a core area of only 0.14 mm2.

DOI
10.1109/bcicts53451.2022.10051697

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This work presents a power amplifier (PA) for microwave-driven entanglement operation in ion-trap-based Ytterbium qubit gates. The design is optimized for a center frequency of 13 GHz with a 3 dB bandwidth of 6 GHz thereby fulfilling the requirements to drive the 12.6 GHz hyperfine transisiton in the electronic ground state of a171Yb+ion. The PA achieves a saturated output power of 14 dBm and a gain of 20 dB at the center frequency. Due to a tunable operating point it is possible to realize a power-efficient amplitude modulation allowing for a qubit-gate fidelity improvement. The presented circuit achieves a measured power-added-efficiency (PAE) of 28 %. Due to maintaining an electrically stable operation during operation-point changes, this circuit is highly suitable for analyzing the effect of various pulse envelopes on the gate fidelity. The proposed circuit is silicon-proven and fabricated in a 0.13 µm SiGe BiCMOS process covering a core area of only 0.14 mm2.
Power amplifiers (PA) are essential for microwave-controlled trapped-ion and semiconductor spin based quantum computers (QC). They adjust the power level of the control signal and therefore the processing time of the QC. Their nonlinearities and memory effects degrade the signal quality and, thus, the fidelity of qubit gate operations. Driving the PA with a significant input power back-off reduces nonlinear effects but is neither power-efficient nor cost-effective. To overcome this limitation, this letter augments the conventional signal generation system applied in QCs by digital predistortion (DPD) to linearize the radio frequency (RF) channel. Numerical analysis of the qubit behavior based on measured representative control signals indicates that DPD improves its fidelity.
This brief presents a frequency doubler (FD) for a microwave-control system intended for an171Yb+^{171}\text {Yb}^{+}171Yb+ion-trap-based quantum computer. The circuit is optimized for frequency multiplication from 11GHz to 13 GHz with a ≥29 dBc fundamental- and third harmonic rejection over the entire frequency range and peak HRR1/HRR3 of 37 dBc/ 39 dBc. This enables the microwave frequency generation to drive the hyperfine transitions in the electronic ground state of an171Yb+^{171}\text {Yb}^{+}171Yb+ion at 12.6 GHz. Cryogenic measurements of the FD down to 4.5 K enable circuit functionality verification for the intended low-temperature operation. Additionally, insights into the cryogenic temperature effects of the employed BiCMOS technology are obtained and used to derive a biasing control methodology for constant performance in the temperature range of 300K to 4.5K. The proposed circuit is silicon-proven and fabricated in a0.13 μm\mathrm {0.13~ \mu \text {m} }0.13 μmSiGe BiCMOS process, consuming a core area of only 0.034 mm2.
Abstract Microwave control of trapped ions can provide an implementation of high-fidelity two-qubit gates free from errors induced by photon scattering. Furthermore, microwave conductors may be embedded into a scalable trap structure, providing the chip-level integration of control that is desirable for scaling. Recent developments have demonstrated how amplitude modulation of the gate drive can permit a two-qubit entangling operation to become robust against motional mode noise and other experimental imperfections. Here, we discuss a method for the numerical optimization of the microwave pulse envelope to produce gate pulses with noise resilience, considerably faster operation and high energy efficiency.
Power amplifiers (PA) are essential for microwavecontrolled trapped-ion and semiconductor spin based quantum computers (QC). They adjust the power level of the control signal and therefore the processing time of the QC. Their nonlinearities and memory effects degrade the signal quality and, thus, the fidelity of qubit gate operations. Driving the PA with a significant input power back-off reduces nonlinear effects but is neither power-efficient nor cost-effective. To overcome this limitation, this letter augments the conventional signal generation system applied in QCs by digital predistortion (DPD) to linearize the radio frequency (RF) channel. Numerical analysis of the qubit behavior based on measured representative control signals indicates that DPD improves its fidelity.
This paper presents a fully integrated System-on-Chip operating from 295 K down to 4 K, capable of generating 0.7 GHz to 1.5 GHz microwave signals for9Be+trapped-ion quantum computer realizations. The proposed design comprises a three-channel waveform generator with integrated 48 kbit memory to generate arbitrary envelope-modulated control signals while consuming only 94 mW, which in the targeted system results in 1.9 mW/qubit. The IC is capable of driving multiple electrodes as required for all gate operations. The chip was fabricated in a 0.13µm SiGe BiCMOS technology. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first reported integrated SoC solution for qubit state control in a trapped-ion quantum computer.
Trapped ions, together with superconducting qubits, are one of the two leading hardware platforms for scalable quantum information processing. The development of quantum computers represents a major technological breakthrough comparable to the introduction of classical computing. The benefits of this technology are currently limited by the technical capability to perform high fidelity entangling operations on the qubits. When gate fidelities surpass the fault-tolerance threshold it becomes possible, through error correction, to increase the system size to an arbitrary number of qubits. In this cumulative thesis we address some of the issues in the scalability of the trapped-ion quantum computer based on microwave near-fields. In this approach, gate operations on one or multiple ions are driven by an oscillating magnetic field generated by a current flowing through a conductor. In the first part of this work we discuss the design of traps toward the implementation of large scale systems. We introduce the basic design of a surface-electrode ion trap with embedded microwave conductors. The oscillating magnetic field required to perform the operations is generated by a single optimized conductor. We discuss the simulation and characterization of the magnetic field pattern, which is fixed by the microwave conductor design. In addition, we demonstrate the capability to simulate, fabricate and characterize a multilayer surface ion trap. Multilayer traps are a key aspect for scalability since they are necessary to achieve large system sizes, with many `ion registers', where the registers are interconnected by physically transporting ions between them. In the second part of this thesis we demonstrate the implementation of a two-qubit entangling gate and we explore the possibilities offered by quantum control methods to improve its fidelity. We perform an entangling gate on two 9Be+ ions and measure a Bell state fidelity of 98.2(1.2)%. Error characterization shows that the gate result is limited by technical issues connected to the ions' motional states. To reduce these errors we apply amplitude modulation of the gate microwave drive. After stabilization of the ions' radial modes, we obtain an amplitude modulated gate with infidelity in the 10^-3 range. The result is confirmed by analyzing the data using three different methods. Using additional dynamic decoupling techniques, these results could bring microwave near-field gates past the fault-tolerance threshold.