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arXiv:quant-ph/0504202 · Physical Review A

Optimal control of coupled Josephson qubits

Andreas K. Spörl, Thomas Schulte‐Herbrüggen, Steffen J. Glaser, Ville Bergholm, M. J. Storcz, Johannes Ferber, Frank K. Wilhelm

Published Jan 2, 2007• 119 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In two and three coupled Josephson charge qubits, we exemplify how to take pulses for realizing quantum gates from fidelity-limited pioneering stages to the decoherence limit of near time optimal high-fidelity controls. Thus, a CNOT gate can be obtained with a fidelity $>1$--${10}^{\ensuremath{-}9}$ for the two qubits. Even when including higher charge states, the leakage is below $1%$, although the pulses are nonadiabatic. The controls are five times faster than the pioneering experiment [Nature (London) 425, 941 (2003)] for otherwise identical parameters---i.e., a progress towards the error-correction threshold by a factor of 100. We outline schemes to generate these shaped pulses by Cauer synthesis, or more generally by few LCR circuits. The approach generalizes to larger systems: e.g., directly realizing a TOFFOLI gate in three linearly coupled charge qubits is shown to be 13 times faster than decomposing it into a circuit of nine CNOT gates of the above experimental work. In view of the next generation of fast pulse shapers, the combination of methods is designed to find wide application in quantum control of pseudospin and macroscopic quantum systems.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.75.012302

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In two and three coupled Josephson charge qubits, we exemplify how to take pulses for realizing quantum gates from fidelity-limited pioneering stages to the decoherence limit of near time optimal high-fidelity controls. Thus, a CNOT gate can be obtained with a fidelity >1>1>1--10\ensuremath−9{10}^{\ensuremath{-}9}10\ensuremath−9 for the two qubits. Even when including higher charge states, the leakage is below 11%1, although the pulses are nonadiabatic. The controls are five times faster than the pioneering experiment [Nature (London) 425, 941 (2003)] for otherwise identical parameters---i.e., a progress towards the error-correction threshold by a factor of 100. We outline schemes to generate these shaped pulses by Cauer synthesis, or more generally by few LCR circuits. The approach generalizes to larger systems: e.g., directly realizing a TOFFOLI gate in three linearly coupled charge qubits is shown to be 13 times faster than decomposing it into a circuit of nine CNOT gates of the above experimental work. In view of the next generation of fast pulse shapers, the combination of methods is designed to find wide application in quantum control of pseudospin and macroscopic quantum systems.
We apply the quantum optimal control theory based on the Krotov method to implement single-qubit XXX and ZZZ gates and two-qubit cnot gates for inductively coupled superconducting flux qubits with fixed qubit transition frequencies and fixed off-diagonal qubit-qubit coupling. Our scheme shares an advantage with other direct-coupling schemes in that it requires no additional coupler subcircuit and control lines. The control lines needed are only for the manipulation of individual qubits (e.g., a time-dependent magnetic flux or field applied on each qubit). The qubits are operated at the optimal coherence points and the gate operation times (less than 1 ns for single-qubit gates and $\ensuremath{\sim}2$ ns for cnotgates) are much shorter than the corresponding qubit decoherence time. A cnot gate or other general quantum gates can be implemented in a single run of the pulse sequence rather than being decomposed into several single-qubit and several entangled two-qubit operations in series by composite pulse sequences. Quantum gates constructed via our scheme are all with very high fidelity (very low error) as our optimal control scheme takes into account the fixed qubit detuning and fixed two-qubit interaction as well as all other time-dependent magnetic-field-induced single-qubit interactions and two-qubit couplings. The effect of leakage to higher-energy-level states and the effect of qubit decoherence on the quantum-gate operations are also discussed.
We present theoretical schemes for performing high-fidelity one- and two-qubit pulsed gates for a superconducting flux qubit. The 'IBM qubit' consists of three Josephson junctions, three loops and a superconducting transmission line. Assuming a fixed inductive qubit–qubit coupling, we show that the effective qubit–qubit interaction is tunable by changing the applied fluxes, and can be made negligible, allowing one to perform high-fidelity single qubit gates. Our schemes are tailored to alleviate errors due to 1/ f noise; we find gates with only 1% loss of fidelity due to this source, for pulse times in the range of 20–30 ns for one-qubit gates ( Z rotations, Hadamard) and 60 ns for a two-qubit gate (controlled- Z ). Our relaxation and dephasing time estimates indicate a comparable loss of fidelity from this source. The control of leakage plays an important role in the design of our shaped pulses, preventing shorter pulse times. However, we have found that imprecision in the control of the quantum phase plays a major role in the limitation of the fidelity of our gates.
A two-qubit controlled-not (cnot) gate, realized by a controlled-phase (C-phase) gate combined with single-qubit gates, has been experimentally implemented recently for quantum-dot spin qubits in isotopically enriched silicon, a promising solid-state system for practical quantum computation. In the experiments, the single-qubit gates have been demonstrated with fault-tolerant control fidelity, but the infidelity of the two-qubit C-phase gate is, primarily due to the electrical noise, still higher than the required error threshold for fault-tolerant quantum computation (FTQC). Here, by taking the realistic system parameters and the experimental constraints on the control pulses into account, we construct experimentally realizable high-fidelity cnot gates robust against electrical noise with the experimentally measured 1/f1.011/{f}^{1.01}1/f1.01 noise spectrum and also against the uncertainty in the interdot tunnel coupling amplitude. Our fine-tuned optimal cnot gate has about two orders of magnitude improvement in gate infidelity over the ideal C-phase gate constructed without considering any noise effect. Furthermore, within the same control framework, high-fidelity and robust single-qubit gates can also be constructed, paving the way for large-scale FTQC.
Quantum optimal control theory allows us to design accurate quantum gates. We employ it to design high-fidelity two-bit gates for Josephson charge qubits in the presence of both leakage and noise. Our protocol considerably increases the fidelity of the gate and, more important, it is quite robust in the disruptive presence of 1/f noise. The improvement in the gate performances discussed in this work (errors approximately 10(-3)-10(-4) in realistic cases) allows us to cross the fault tolerance threshold.
Abstract Reaching high-speed, high-fidelity qubit operations requires precise control over the shape of the underlying pulses. For weakly anharmonic systems, such as superconducting transmon qubits, short gates lead to leakage to states outside of the computational subspace. Control pulses designed with open-loop optimal control may reduce such leakage. However, model inaccuracies can severely limit the usability of such pulses. We implemented a closed-loop optimization that simultaneously adapts all control parameters based on measurements of a cost function built from Clifford gates. We directly optimize the amplitude and phase of each sample point of the digitized control pulse. We thereby fully exploit the capabilities of the pulse generation electronics and create a 4.16 ns single-qubit pulse with 99.76 % fidelity and 0.044 % leakage. This is a sevenfold reduction of the leakage rate and a threefold reduction in standard errors of the best DRAG pulse we have calibrated at such short durations on the same system.
We study the realization of a Toffoli gate with superconducting qubits in a circuit-quantum-electrodynamics setup using quantum-control methods. Starting with optimized piecewise-constant control fields acting on all qubits and typical strengths of XYXYXY-type coupling between the qubits, we demonstrate that the optimal gate fidelities are affected only slightly by a ``low-pass'' filtering of these fields with the typical cutoff frequencies of microwave driving. Restricting ourselves to the range of control-field amplitudes for which the leakage to the noncomputational states of a physical qubit is heavily suppressed, we theoretically predict that in the absence of decoherence and leakage, within 75 ns a Toffoli gate can be realized with intrinsic fidelities higher than 9090%90 while fidelities above 9999%99 can be reached in about 140 ns.