After years of academic development, the circuit quantum electrodynamics is entering the age of applications. This thesis was realized in this context of creating tools to bridge the gap between an astounding academic quantum system, superconducting circuits, and a grand goal, the universal quantum computer. A likely blueprint for quantum processors consists in the assembly of a large number of elementary modules arranged in a network.In this experimental thesis, a possible node for such a network, the quantum node, was developed and fabricated using state-of-the-art techniques for 2D superconducting microwave circuits. This node was first used to implement a novel sequential readout method for a superconducting qubit. This experiment, first proposed in 2013 by Sete et al., potentially allows for faster, more accurate read out of superconducting qubits. The read out of qubits is one of the several bottlenecks limiting the development of fault-tolerant superconducting quantum computers, which made this project both useful as a demonstration of the quantum node and for applications. This novel readout method achieves readout performances close to state-of-the-art of superconducting qubit readout even though the chip was not optimized for that purpose.During this work, we also contributed to two other experiments engineering quantum measurement and dissipation with superconducting circuits. First, a dedicated circuit was developed to demonstrate a new form of quantum measurement: the multiplexed photon number measurement. In that experiment led by A. Essig and Q. Ficheux, a superconducting transmon quantum bit is read out at multiple frequencies simultaneously to extract more than one bit of information about the number of photons contained in a microwave resonator coupled to that quantum bit.Second, we contributed to the experimental demonstration of the exponential suppression of bit-flips in a qubit encoded in a Schrödinger Cat state of a microwave mode. This experiment led by R. Lescanne and Z. Leghtas, demonstrates the improvement by a factor 300 of the lifetime of a qubit thanks to the autonomous error correction realized through the engineering of the dissipation of a microwave mode.
After years of academic development, the circuit quantum electrodynamics is entering the age of applications. This thesis was realized in this context of creating tools to bridge the gap between an astounding academic quantum system, superconducting circuits, and a grand goal, the universal quantum computer. A likely blueprint for quantum processors consists in the assembly of a large number of elementary modules arranged in a network.In this experimental thesis, a possible node for such a network, the quantum node, was developed and fabricated using state-of-the-art techniques for 2D superconducting microwave circuits. This node was first used to implement a novel sequential readout method for a superconducting qubit. This experiment, first proposed in 2013 by Sete et al., potentially allows for faster, more accurate read out of superconducting qubits. The read out of qubits is one of the several bottlenecks limiting the development of fault-tolerant superconducting quantum computers, which made this project both useful as a demonstration of the quantum node and for applications. This novel readout method achieves readout performances close to state-of-the-art of superconducting qubit readout even though the chip was not optimized for that purpose.During this work, we also contributed to two other experiments engineering quantum measurement and dissipation with superconducting circuits. First, a dedicated circuit was developed to demonstrate a new form of quantum measurement: the multiplexed photon number measurement. In that experiment led by A. Essig and Q. Ficheux, a superconducting transmon quantum bit is read out at multiple frequencies simultaneously to extract more than one bit of information about the number of photons contained in a microwave resonator coupled to that quantum bit.Second, we contributed to the experimental demonstration of the exponential suppression of bit-flips in a qubit encoded in a Schrödinger Cat state of a microwave mode. This experiment led by R. Lescanne and Z. Leghtas, demonstrates the improvement by a factor 300 of the lifetime of a qubit thanks to the autonomous error correction realized through the engineering of the dissipation of a microwave mode.
The association of a quantum bit and a harmonic mode dispersively coupled is one of the most studied systems in the field of quantum electrodynamics of superconducting circuits. It offers one of the most reliable current methods for measuring the state of a quantum bit in a non-destructive manner and has enabled numerous quantum information experiments, studying the information obtained through this measurement and the dynamics of the qubit when subjected to it. It also provides the ability to prepare and manipulate the quantum state of the harmonic mode via the qubit, allowing information to be stored and processed in this mode, which is fundamental to building a quantum processor. This thesis presents two experiments based on this architecture. The first demonstrates how to use qubit fluorescence to non-destructively read the number of photons contained in a microwave cavity in a single shot, that is, before the cavity has relaxed. This makes it possible to measure photon number trajectories and observe them leave the cavity one by one. The analysis of this experiment relies on a fluorescence analysis in terms of propagating modes and addresses a number of questions about the information that these modes may contain. The second is a demonstration of the use of a neural network for quantum state preparation in the cavity. Here, the goal is to accelerate the optimization of control electromagnetic pulses at the frequencies of the cavity and qubit to create a quantum state in the cavity with high fidelity, and this for a broad class of states. To evaluate the efficiency of this new optimization protocol over this class of states, an optimal method to assess the fidelity of the prepared states using a Wigner function measurement protocol was experimentally implemented for the first time.
Circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED), exemplified by a coupled system of a superconducting qubit and a microwave cavity, is a powerful framework for the quantum control and measurement of macroscopic quantum states in solid-state circuits. Quantum circuits based on superconducting qubits have emerged as one of the leading platforms in the pursuit of fault-tolerant quantum computing. Despite significant progress in extending qubit lifetimes, refining experimental protocols, and scaling up quantum processors, errors arising from the control and measurement of superconducting qubits continue to hinder the realization of a universal quantum computer. To investigate the error mechanisms for state-of-the-art qubits, we realize long-lived superconducting transmon qubits that exhibit fluctuating lifetimes, with an average of 0.2 ms and a maximum exceeding 0.4 ms. We then investigate their dominant error mechanism. By introducing novel time-resolved error measurements that are synchronized with the operation of the pulse tube cooler in a dilution refrigerator, we find that mechanical vibrations from the pulse tube induce nonequilibrium dynamics in highly coherent qubits, leading to their correlated bit-flip errors. Our findings not only deepen our understanding of qubit error mechanisms but also provide valuable insights into potential error-mitigation strategies for achieving fault tolerance by decoupling superconducting qubits from their mechanical environments. We also present a novel scheme for operating a cQED system in a regime where the cavity is largely displaced. We find that a qubit drive at the bare cavity frequency can effectively displace the cavity field while minimizing the cavity-drive-induced dephasing and the ac Stark shift. Furthermore, we demonstrate that standard cQED protocols, such as qubit control, readout, and cavity single-photon generation, remain compatible with largely displaced cavity fields, even beyond the critical photon number. These findings open new pathways for exploring cQED dynamics in large-photon-number regimes, including the study of nonlinear phenomena in microwave cavities, the saturation of two-level system baths for extending the coherence of microwave quantum states, and the acceleration of the dispersive readout. Finally, mechanical resonators have emerged as integral components in quantum computing for storing and transducing quantum information. Low-frequency mechanical resonators, with extremely low energy dissipation rates, are particularly interesting for extending the lifetimes of stored quantum information. However, integrating low-frequency mechanical resonators with qubits is challenging because their small energy gaps make coherent energy exchange and ground-state preparation difficult. In this thesis, we report the first steps towards the characterization of a hybrid quantum device, consisting of a Transmon qubit and a circuit optomechanical system, both coupled to a 3D microwave cavity.
The discovery of quantum mechanics in the 20th century forms the basis of many of the technologies that define our lives today. The ability to engineer and manipulate individual quantum systems -- even create artificial atoms -- promises a similar revolutionary leap in technology. A quantum technology of particular interest is quantum computing, which has the potential to solve problems that are intractable for classical computers, opening up new domains of computation. Meanwhile, an attractive approach to creating engineered quantum systems is circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED). Where research initially focused on understanding the physics of cQED devices, focus has shifted to building systems capable of performing useful computations. However, this remains extremely challenging, in part due to the inherently fragile nature of the individual quantum bits, but also due to difficulties in controlling and scaling up these systems. This thesis focuses on the control aspects of building an extensible full-stack quantum computer based on superconducting transmon qubits. We define the demonstration of quantum fault-tolerance as our target application to give focus to our efforts. The QuSurf architecture for a full-stack quantum computer presented in this thesis is designed with this application in mind. We provide a detailed study of the error sources present in this system and give an overview of the relevant characterization techniques. In the second part of this thesis, we address several key challenges in the control of a quantum computer. To realize high-fidelity coherence limited gates, we present a novel tuneup protocol that achieves a tenfold speedup over the state-of-the-art. This is realized by eliminating the need for qubit initialization. We demonstrate this protocol by calibrating single-qubit gates to a coherence limited Clifford fidelity of 99.9% in one minute. Performing repeated parity checks, as is required for quantum error correction, requires reusing qubits quickly after they have been measured. By introducing a numerically optimized depletion pulse we are able to speeds up the depletion of measurement photons in a readout resonator without having to rely on specific symmetry conditions. Using this technique speed up photon depletion by more than six inverse resonator linewidths, reducing the error rate in an emulated ancilla parity check by a factor 75. Flux-pulsing based two-qubit gates are the fastest two-qubit gates. However, they are also very technically demanding. The key challenge in performing these gates is addressing the distortions that control signals experience as they traverse various electrical components. We have developed Cryoscope (short for cryogenic oscilloscope) to characterize and correct these distortions. Cryoscope is an in-situ technique that uses the qubit to sample control pulses of arbitrary shape. Even when correcting distortions to within sim0.1 two-qubit gates are history-dependent due to the long timescale upon which some of these distortions act. We have invented Net-Zero, a new type of flux-pulsing based two-qubit gate, to address this problem. It makes use of a symmetry condition of the transmon to have net-zero integral, making the gate resilient to long-timescale distortions. The gate suppresses leakage out of the computational subspace to 0.1% by making use of leakage interference and has a built-in echo effect that enhances the coherence of the gate, achieving a two-qubit gate fidelity of 99.1%. Custom software is required to perform the physics experiments needed to build and operate a quantum computer. PycQED is an open-source software framework we have developed for this purpose. We discuss the design choices and concepts of PycQED before turning our focus to characterization and calibration. Here we introduced dependency graphs as a useful abstraction and system emulation as an essential development tool for automating the characterization and calibration process. We conclude the thesis by reflecting on the limitations of our architecture and providing an outlook on the grand challenges of building a useful kilo-qubit sized quantum computer. We define these challenges as The Application Problem, The Fabrication Problem, and The Calibration Problem.
A quantum computer will use the properties of quantum physics to solve certain computational problems much faster than otherwise possible. One promising potential implementation is to use superconducting quantum bits in the circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) architecture. There, the low energy states of a nonlinear electronic oscillator are isolated and addressed as a qubit. These qubits are capacitively coupled to the modes of a microwave-frequency transmission line resonator which serves as a quantum communication bus. Microwave electrical pulses are applied to the resonator to manipulate or measure the qubit state. State control is calibrated using diagnostic sequences that expose systematic errors. Hybridization of the resonator with the qubit gives it a nonlinear response when driven strongly, useful for amplifying the measurement signal to enhance accuracy. Qubits coupled to the same bus may coherently interact with one another via the exchange of virtual photons. A two-qubit conditional phase gate mediated by this interaction can deterministically entangle its targets, and is used to generate two-qubit Bell states and three-qubit GHZ states. These three-qubit states are of particular interest because they redundantly encode quantum information. They are the basis of the quantum repetition code prototypical of more sophisticated schemes required for quantum computation. Using a three-qubit Toffoli gate, this code is demonstrated to autonomously correct either bit- or phase-flip errors. Despite observing the expected behavior, the overall fidelity is low because of decoherence. A superior implementation of cQED replaces the transmission-line resonator with a three-dimensional box mode, increasing lifetimes by an order of magnitude. In-situ qubit frequency control is enabled with control lines, which are used to fully characterize and control the system Hamiltonian.
This thesis mainly summarizes two experiments that relate to building a quantum computer out of superconducting transmon qubits. Transmon qubits have emerged as one of the foremost solid state qubits, realizing processors with more than ten qubits and demonstrating small scale quantum algorithms as well as quantum error correction schemes. Right now, there is a race between different academic and industry research groups to scale up transmon qubit processors. The first experiment was a demonstration of qubit control by selective broadcasting in order to reduce the scaling of expensive electronics with the number of qubits for individual single-qubit control. We demonstrated that we can bring two transmon qubits to the same frequency (combining fabrication accuracy and in-situ fine tuning) and use the same hardware to control both, routing the pulses with a nanosecond-timescale vector switch matrix. Despite the compromises required by this technique, we show a scalable path to single qubit control beyond the threshold required for quantum error correction. In benchmarking, we take into account gate leakage due to the fact that transmons are fundamentally multi-level systems. In the second experiment we establish entanglement between two transmon qubits on different chips. We use an entanglement by measurement scheme and demonstrate that we can overcome minor fabrication imperfections by shaping our measurement pulses. Ultimately, performance is mainly limited by photon loss between the chips and up to the amplification chain. This entanglement mediated by traveling photons could be used to make a distributed transmon processor where computations are spread across several chip modules. This modularity could enable connectivities that cannot be realized on chip and ease fabrication requirements, as modules could be individually fabricated and selected. Thus, both of these experiments fit into the larger effort to converge on the hardware, control equipment and architecture of a future large-scale transmon quantum computer. Other experiments I contributed to are summarized in the conclusion chapter to show the diverse physics that can be studied in cQED experiments.
In a quantum computer, the information carriers, which are bits in ordinary computers, are implemented as devices that exhibit coherent superpositions of physical states and entanglement. Such components, known as quantum bits or qubits, can be realized with various different types of two-state quantum systems. Quantum computers will be built for computational speed, with hoped for applications especially in cryptography and in other tasks where classical computers remain inefficient. Circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) is a quantum-computer architecture which employs superconducting electronic components and microwave photon fields as building blocks. Compared to cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED), where atoms are trapped in physical cavities, cQED is more attractive in that its qubits are tunable and conveniently integrable with the electronics already in use. This architecture has shown some of the most promising qubit designs, despite their coherence times reaching tens of microseconds, are still below the state of the art with spin qubits, which reach milliseconds. Coherence times are historically the most relevant parameters describing the fitness of a qubit, although these days not necessarily the limiting factor. This thesis presents a comprehensive set of theoretical and experimental methods for measuring the characteristic parameters of superconducting qubits. We especially study transmission-line-shunted plasma oscillation qubits, or transmons, and presents experimental results for a single sample. Transmon capacitively couples a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) with a coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonator, often with added frequency tunability utilizing an external magnet. The number of superconducting charge carriers tunnelled through a junction in the SQUID are used as qubit degrees of freedom. Readout of the qubit state is carried out by measuring transmission through the CPW. A cryogenic setup is employed with measurement and driving pulses delivered from microwave sources. Steady-state spectroscopy is employed to determine the resonance frequencies of the qubit and the resonator, qubit-resonator coupling constants, and the energy parameters of the qubit. Pulse-modulated measurements are employed to determine the coherence times of the qubit. The related analysis- and simulation programs and scripts are collected togithub.com/patomaki.