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Very Low Temperature Measurement System for Quantum Computation with Superconductors

Terry P. Orlando

Published Aug 27, 2003• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Two dilution refrigerators have been installed and made operational for the purpose of having dedicated measurement systems one at MIT and the other at the University of Rochester for carrying out quantum computing experiments. Both systems are a Kelvinox 400 model from Oxford instruments, equipped with both dc and rf lines for measurements; and both systems are vibrationally isolated and magnetically and electrically shielded for low noise measurements. Within the first year these systems have been fitted with custom- designed sample spaces and wiring. Within less than a year, this equipment has enabled the researchers to demonstrate: quantum levels in a persistent current qubit, rf and dc spectroscopy of these energy levels, and control circuits using Single Flux Quantum circuits. This equipment is enhancing our research effort to study, design, demonstrate, and develop algorithms and quantum-coherent circuitry using magnetic-flux-based superconducting qubits.

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Two dilution refrigerators have been installed and made operational for the purpose of having dedicated measurement systems one at MIT and the other at the University of Rochester for carrying out quantum computing experiments. Both systems are a Kelvinox 400 model from Oxford instruments, equipped with both dc and rf lines for measurements; and both systems are vibrationally isolated and magnetically and electrically shielded for low noise measurements. Within the first year these systems have been fitted with custom- designed sample spaces and wiring. Within less than a year, this equipment has enabled the researchers to demonstrate: quantum levels in a persistent current qubit, rf and dc spectroscopy of these energy levels, and control circuits using Single Flux Quantum circuits. This equipment is enhancing our research effort to study, design, demonstrate, and develop algorithms and quantum-coherent circuitry using magnetic-flux-based superconducting qubits.
We develop a small-signal measurement system on cryogen-free dilution refrigerator which is suitable for superconducting qubit studies. Cryogen-free refrigerators have several advantages such as less manpower for system operation and large sample space for experiment, but concern remains about whether the noise introduced by the coldhead can be made sufficiently low. In this work, we demonstrate some effective approaches of acoustic isolation to reduce the noise impact. The electronic circuit that includes the current, voltage, and microwave lines for qubit coherent state measurement is described. For the current and voltage lines designed to have a low pass of dc-100 kHz, we show that the measurements of Josephson junction's switching current distribution with a width down to 1 nA, and quantum coherent Rabi oscillation and Ramsey interference of the superconducting qubit can be successfully performed.
Our aim was to develop the concepts and perform the experiments to establish a clear path towards useful quantum coherent computation using superconducting flux-based qubits. We have concentrated upon using superconducting single flux quantum (SFQ) circuitry integrated on the qubit chip to act as the interface between a quantum circuit and laboratory electronics. We have developed SFQ circuits for initialization and for read-out of the quantum state of a qubit; for precise timing of duration and exact biasing all with picosecond-scale precision. We developed a set of techniques to design such qubit control circuitry while preserving proper isolation (not significantly contributing to decoherence). We also designed an SFQ experiment to investigate quantum behavior using foundry-fabricated chips at higher temperatures. We acquired and custom set-up a He3 refrigerator, and demonstrated SFQ circuit functionality at 300 mK for the first time. We have investigated a new method for quantum control both analytically and numerically, using isolated SFQ pulses instead of resonant excitation, and shown that the minimum operation time can be dramatically decreased ii some cases. However, the complete lack of custom fabrication has prevented us from making progress towards our experimental goals.
A hybrid quantum computing architecture combining quantum processors and quantum memory units allows for exploiting each component's unique properties to enhance the overall performance of the total system. However, superconducting qubits are highly sensitive to magnetic fields, while spin ensembles require finite fields for control, creating a major integration challenge. In this work, we demonstrate the first experimental setup that satisfies these constraints and provides verified qubit stability. Our cryogenic setup comprises two spatially and magnetically decoupled sample volumes inside a single dilution refrigerator: one hosting flux-tunable superconducting qubits and the other a spin ensemble equipped with a superconducting solenoid generating fields up to 50 mT. We show that several layers of Cryophy shielding and an additional superconducting aluminum shield suppress magnetic crosstalk by more than eight orders of magnitude, ensuring stability of the qubit's performance. Moreover, the operation of the solenoid adds minimal thermal load on the relevant stages of the dilution refrigerator. Our results enable scalable hybrid quantum architectures with low-loss integration, marking a key step toward scalable hybrid quantum computing platforms.
This thesis presents circuit quantum electrodynamic (cQED) experiments done with artificial atoms coupled to a high quality factor superconducting microwave resonator. This work discusses the theoretical framework, design, fabrication, implementation and characterization of a multi-qubit system using superconducting persistent current qubits, often referred as flux qubits. \n \nWe developed a new type of cryogenic aid for fast turnaround microwave experiments. The minimum turnaround time to perform microwave experiments in dilution refrigerators is typically a few days, as required by cooling down and warming up the entire refrigerator. The cryogenic microwave payload and wiring needed for each qubit and resonator add a significant heat load to \nthe system which typically only has a few µW s of cooling power at millikelvin temperatures. We present a new experimental approach we developed in which a suitable sample holder is attached to a cold-insertable probe and brought in contact with transmission lines permanently mounted inside the cryostat. The total turnaround time is reduced to 8 hours if the target temperature is 80 mK. This new measurement method increased our ability to successfully identify good devices with fast design-characterization iterations, while allowing months-long measurements at 30 mK. \n \nOur device architecture uses several qubits, each of which is controlled via on-chip fast flux bias lines. Readout of the qubit’s quantum state is performed by homodyne detection of the resonator field at large driving power. We observe long coherence times at the optimal bias point of the flux qubits and present decoherence measurements around this optimal point, where the \nflux qubits couple mostly to magnetic flux noise. Dynamical decoupling techniques employing fast microwave pulses are used to protect the qubit’s coherence and allow calculating the magnetic flux noise power spectral density of the qubit’s environment. Photon-mediated interaction between distant qubits in the resonator allows the implementation of a two-qubit controlled-NOT gate \nusing the selective darkening technique. \n \nThis multi-qubit superconducting design is an interesting platform to study the decoherence properties of flux qubits, the properties of strong interaction of electromagnetic radiation with macroscopic quantum systems. These results demonstrate the potential of cQED as a platform for fundamental investigations of decoherence and quantum dynamics of flux qubits.
Rapid thermal cycling is a central bottleneck in the development of superconducting quantum devices: conventional dilution refrigerators require cooldowns of a day or more and substantial cryogenic infrastructure, which throttles the fabricate-measure-redesign loop. We present an ultracompact dilution refrigerator (3 kg in mass and 100 mm in diameter) that completes a full cooldown-warm-up cycle to a base temperature of 70 mK in 1.2 hours when unloaded, and in 2.1 hours when fully equipped with the microwave wiring required for qubit measurements, while delivering 20 microW of cooling power at 100 mK. We validate the platform through a complete characterization of a two-fluxonium device: we extract the full circuit Hamiltonian by two-tone spectroscopy, measure energy-relaxation and coherence times, and benchmark single-qubit control. Although the relaxation time is limited by the base temperature of the system, we reach a single-qubit gate fidelity of up to 99%, at the coherence limit set by our operating temperature. These results demonstrate that compact, fast-cycling dilution refrigeration can support state-of-the-art quantum-device characterization without sacrificing measurement quality, offering a practical route to high-throughput quantum-hardware development.
We report the measurement results of the low-power single-flux-quantum (SFQ) circuits below 20 mK using a dilution refrigerator. We have been developing the SFQ circuits using a lowered critical current density process (250 A/cm2) and low-voltage design (0.1–0.5 mV) toward digital signal processing near superconductor quantum bits. So far, we have designed several basic SFQ cells, including wiring elements, flip-flops, and logic gates, using the four Nb planarized layer process and obtained the correct operation at 300 mK. In this study, we tested several SFQ circuits aiming to evaluate the operation at the mixing chamber stage of a dilution refrigerator. Our experimental results show that there was almost no change of device parameters, such as critical current values of Josephson junctions, or operating margins of the basic cells between 300 mK and 16 mK.