State Tomography of Capacitively Shunted Phase Qubits with High Fidelity
Matthias Steffen, M. Ansmann, R. McDermott, Nadav Y. Katz, Radoslaw C. Bialczak, Erik A. Lucero, M. Neeley, Eva Maria Weig, Andrew N. Cleland, John M. Martinis
We introduce a new design concept for superconducting phase quantum bits (qubits) in which we explicitly separate the capacitive element from the Josephson tunnel junction for improved qubit performance. The number of two-level systems that couple to the qubit is thereby reduced by an order of magnitude and the measurement fidelity improves to 90%. This improved design enables the first demonstration of quantum state tomography with superconducting qubits using single-shot measurements.
We introduce a new design concept for superconducting phase quantum bits (qubits) in which we explicitly separate the capacitive element from the Josephson tunnel junction for improved qubit performance. The number of two-level systems that couple to the qubit is thereby reduced by an order of magnitude and the measurement fidelity improves to 90%. This improved design enables the first demonstration of quantum state tomography with superconducting qubits using single-shot measurements.
We present a new configuration concept in which two similar Josephson junctions are coupled through a capacitor placed in parallel to a dc-superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) to improve the characteristics of phase qubits. In real coupled quantum systems, because of mutual effects such as crosstalk, entangled quantum states cannot be independently measured. The proposed two-qubit system is demonstrated to have a negligible crosstalk, obtained from the application of a single measurement pulse and an appropriate external flux to one of the junctions and the dc-SQUID, respectively. Surprisingly, the theoretically predicted fidelity for a single-qubit design increases to 99.99% for typical Josephson junction parameters. The high-fidelity measurement is reached even with pulse times less than 1 ns, while the highest fidelities reported so far are obtained by wide temporal pulses through single-shot current pulse measurements. This is accomplished by proper coupling capacitance, which determines the coupling time, the measurement time, and their proportion. Furthermore, the ratio of decoherence time for this structure with respect to the one belonging to a typical qubit is found to be more than 1.42.
We propose a scheme to perform two-qubit state tomography by independently measuring the ensemble average of quantum states of two coupled superconducting transmon qubits. Each qubit is capacitively coupled to its own readout cavity and can be measured separately. In order to obtain the density matrix of a two-qubit state, we apply four two-qubit unitary operations to the initial state and measure the corresponding qubit states, from which the elements of the two-qubit density matrix can be extracted. By using this scheme, we measure the entangled two qubits with high fidelity.
Demonstration of quantum entanglement, a key resource in quantum computation arising from a nonclassical correlation of states, requires complete measurement of all states in varying bases. By using simultaneous measurement and state tomography, we demonstrated entanglement between two solid-state qubits. Single qubit operations and capacitive coupling between two super-conducting phase qubits were used to generate a Bell-type state. Full two-qubit tomography yielded a density matrix showing an entangled state with fidelity up to 87%. Our results demonstrate a high degree of unitary control of the system, indicating that larger implementations are within reach.
In this work we consider measurements on quantum systems emphasizing\non read-out of superconducting qubits. The qubit is always coupled to an\nenvironment, containing a macroscopic number of degrees of freedom. This\nperturbs the qubit and destroys the phase coherence of the quantum state.\nOne tries to minimize this destructive effect by encoding the quantum information in quantum states which do not couple strongly to the dominant\nnoise sources. It is therefore necessary to design read-out methods that can\ndistinguish these states.\n\nWe focus primarily on the single Cooper-pair box (SCB) charge qubit, whose\nproperties are based on the Josephson effect and Coulumb blockade in superconducting electrical circuits. By encoding the information in the qubit\nenergy eigenstates, it is possible to protect it from the most dangerous decoherence source - charge fluctuations in the environment. We investigate\nthe measurement setup, where the SCB is coupled to a lumped element LCoscillator whose resonance frequency is orders of magnitude smaller than the qubit energy splitting. In this regime the SCB will act as an effective positive or negative capacitance, depending on the quantum state. This quantum capacitance then shifts the oscillator resonance frequency, which can be detected in a homodyne phase measurement.\n\nWe have found that reading out a charge qubit by measuring its quantum\ncapacitance in this manner is quantum limited, independently of the oscillator\nquality factor Q. Moreover, we have found that the low-Q oscillator\nis advantageous for the measurement in two ways: first, such an oscillator\nbetter protects the qubit from thermal dephasing, and, second, it allows to\nincrease the speed of the read-out, making it possible to distinguish the qubit states in a single shot measurement.
Superconducting devices as quantum bits (qubits) are one of the most promising candidates for implementing a practical quantum computer. Over the last decade, quantum coherence times of superconducting qubits have been continuously improved. Operating qubits in noise insensitive points, eliminating the participation of the lossy materials, and better isolation from environment increased the decoherence times from nanoseconds to tens of microseconds. One recent approach on the qubit design is to shunt the Josephson junctions with large capacitors to reduce the sensitivity to noise and to redistribute the stored electromagnetic energy in a well-engineered area. This approach was first applied on charge qubits and later adopted to other types of superconducting qubits. \n \nIn this thesis, we present the design and the characterization of a three-Josephson junction superconducting circuit with three large shunt capacitors. We present experiments on decoherence in the circuit used as a qubit. The qubit relaxation time T₁ is reaching as high as 47 μs and the spin-echo dephasing time T₂ = 9.4 μs. In addition, we present spectroscopy experiments and decoherence characterization in the qutrit subspace formed by the lowest three energy levels. The spectroscopy data is in excellent agreement with the complete circuit model based on the system capacitance matrix. At the flux symmetry point, the circuit has a large anharmonicity, defined as the difference between the 1-2 and 0-1 transition frequencies, approaching 2π × 3.7 GHz, which is enabling fast single qubit operations. We performed randomized benchmarking with the qubit gates with a duration of 1.62 ns and an average gate fidelity of 99.9%. \n \nMoreover, we present experiments with multi-level control in qutrit subspace, formed by the lowest three energy levels. We demonstrate a single step experimental implementation of a generalized Walsh-Hadamard gate. We use a decomposition of the quantum gate into two unitary operations, one implemented by an off-diagonal Hamiltonian and the other implemented by a diagonal Hamiltonian. The off-diagonal Hamiltonian is obtained by the simultaneous driving of the transitions between levels 0-1, 1-2, and 0-2, with the latter being a two-photon process. The diagonal Hamiltonian is effectively implemented by appropriately shifting the phases of adjacent pulses. The gate is characterized using tomography process and the average fidelity exceeds 90%, in good agreement with numerical simulations that take into account the multi-level structure of the system.
During this grant, we have invented, designed and successfully operated a new type of readout for charge-phase superconducting qubits. This new readout is based on the bifurcation of an RF-driven Josephson junction inserted in the loop of a split Cooper pair box. When the amplitude of the RF drive is in the vicinity of the bifurcation points a small change in the effective critical current of the junction is amplified into a large phase change in the reflected signal. The performance reached by the device is in agreement with theoretical predictions. The speed of this readout is unprecedented: we measure in 20ns the critical current increment corresponding to the transition between the 2 states of the qubit. The repetition rate is 10Mz. We have performed a series of experiments showing that the amplification mechanism behaves as expected. No quasiparticles are produced during the readout and the back-action on the qubit when the readout is OFF is minimal. We have performed decoherence measurements at dilution refrigerator temperatures on the quantronium qubit integrated with RF readout. These measurements involve all possible 1-qubit gate operations. Compared with the DC readout method we have gained in repetition rate (factor of 100), signal-to-noise ration on all coherence signals (factor of 10) but most importantly, on readout fidelity which now attains more than 60% (compared to 15%). This last improvement is very important for showing the entanglement produced by two-bit gate operations. The T1 has also been improved by 250%. We still have comparable T2 as before but we suspect this is due to insufficient filtering on the listening lines of our measurement apparatus and this problem is technically solvable. In parallel with this work on readout and decoherence of the quantronium qubit, we have designed a new 2-bit gate based on capacitive coupling between qubits and worked out the complete protocol of pulses.