Photonic phase transition in circuit quantum electrodynamics lattices coupled to superconducting phase qubits

A hybrid quantum architecture was proposed to engineer a localization-delocalization phase transition of light in a two-dimension square lattices of superconducting coplanar waveguide resonators, which are interconnected by current-biased Josephson junction phase qubits. We find that the competition between the on-site repulsion and the nonlocal photonic hopping leads to the Mott insulator-superfluid transition. By using the mean-field approach and the quantum master equation, the phase boundary between these two different phases could be obtained when the dissipative effects of superconducting resonators and phase qubit are considered. The good tunability of the effective on-site repulsion and photon-hopping strengths enable quantum simulation on condensed matter physics and many-body models using such a superconducting resonator lattice system. The experimental feasibility is discussed using the currently available technology in the circuit QED.     

Preparation of multi-photon Fock states and quantum entanglement properties in circuit QED

We demonstrate the controllable generation of multi-photon Fock states in circuit quantum electrodynamics （circuit QED）. The external bias flux regulated by a counter can effectively adjust the bias time on each superconducting flux qubit so that each flux qubit can pass in turn through the circuit cavity and thereby avoid the effect of decoherence. We further investigate the quantum correlation dynamics of coupling superconducting qubits in a Fock state. The results reveal that the lower the photon number of the light field in the number state, the stronger the interaction between qubits is, then the more beneficial to maintaining entanglement between qubits it will be.     

Mott insulator-superfluid phase transition in a detuned multi-connected Jaynes-Cummings lattice

The connectivity and tunability of superconducting quantum devices provide a rich platform to build quantum simulators and study novel many-body physics. Here we study quantum phase transition in a detuned multi-connected Jaynes-Cummings lattice, which can be constructed with superconducting circuits. This model is composed of alternatively connected qubits and cavity modes.Using a numerical method, we show that by varying the detuning between the qubits and the cavities, a phase transition from the superfluid phase to the Mott insulator phase occurs at commensurate fillings in a one-dimensional array. We study the phase transition in lattices with symmetric and asymmetric couplings, respectively.     

Hybrid quantum circuit with a superconducting qubit coupled to a spin ensemble

We report the experimental realization of a hybrid quantum circuit combining a superconducting qubit and an ensemble of electronic spins. The qubit, of the transmon type, is coherently coupled to the spin ensemble consisting of nitrogen-vacancy centers in a diamond crystal via a frequency-tunable superconducting resonator acting as a quantum bus. Using this circuit, we prepare a superposition of the qubit states that we store into collective excitations of the spin ensemble and retrieve back into the qubit later on. These results constitute a proof of concept of spin-ensemble based quantum memory for superconducting qubits.     

Decoherence in solid-state qubits

The interaction of solid-state qubits with environmental degrees of freedom strongly affects the qubit dynamics, and leads to decoherence. In quantum information processing with solid-state qubits, decoherence significantly limits the performances of such devices. Therefore, it is necessary to fully understand the mechanisms that lead to decoherence. In this review, we discuss how decoherence affects two of the most successful realizations of solid-state qubits, namely, spin qubits and superconducting qubits. In the former, the qubit is encoded in the spin 1/2 of the electron, and it is implemented by confining the electron spin in a semiconductor quantum dot. Superconducting devices show quantum behaviour at low temperatures, and the qubit is encoded in the two lowest energy levels of a superconducting circuit. The electron spin in a quantum dot has two main decoherence channels, a (Markovian) phonon-assisted relaxation channel, due to the presence of a spin–orbit interaction, and a (non-Markovian) spin bath constituted by the spins of the nuclei in the quantum dot that interact with the electron spin via the hyperfine interaction. In a superconducting qubit, decoherence takes place as a result of fluctuations in the control parameters, such as bias currents, applied flux and bias voltages, and via losses in the dissipative circuit elements.     

Transfer of quantum entangled states between superconducting qubits and microwave field qubits

Transferring entangled states between matter qubits and microwave-field (or optical-field) qubits is of fundamental interest in quantum mechanics and necessary in hybrid quantum information processing and quantum communication. We here propose a way for transferring entangled states between superconducting qubits (matter qubits) and microwave-field qubits. This proposal is realized by a system consisting of multiple superconducting qutrits and microwave cavities. Here, „qutrit” refers to a three-level quantum system with the two lowest levels encoding a qubit while the third level acting as an auxiliary state. In contrast, the microwave-field qubits are encoded with coherent states of microwave cavities. Because the third energy level of each qutrit is not populated during the operation, decoherence from the higher energy levels is greatly suppressed. The entangled states can be deterministically transferred because measurement on the states is not needed. The operation time is independent of the number of superconducting qubits or microwave-field qubits. In addition, the architecture of the circuit system is quite simple because only a coupler qutrit and an auxiliary cavity are required. As an example, our numerical simulations show that high-fidelity transfer of entangled states from two superconducting qubits to two microwave-field qubits is feasible with present circuit QED technology. This proposal is quite general and can be extended to transfer entangled states between other matter qubits (e.g., atoms, quantum dots, and NV centers) and microwave- or optical-field qubits encoded with coherent states.     

External control of qubit-photon interaction and multi-qubit reset in a dissipative quantum network

A quantum network is a promising quantum many-body system because of its tailored geometry and controllable interaction. Here,we propose an external control scheme for the qubit-photon interaction and multiqubit reset in a dissipative quantum network,which comprises superconducting circuit chains with microwave drives and filter-filter couplings. The traditional multiqubit reset of the quantum network requires physically disconnected qubits to prevent their entanglement. However, we use an original effect of dissipation, i.e., consuming the entanglement generated by qubits' interaction, to achieve an external control of the multiqubit reset in an always-connected superconducting circuit. The reset time is independent of the number of qubits in the quantum network. Our proposal can tolerate considerable fluctuations in the system parameters and can be applicable to higherdimensional quantum networks.     

基于超导量子比特的电磁感应透明研究进展

超导量子计算是目前被认为最有希望实现量子计算机的方案之一. 超导量子比特是超导量子计算的核心部件. 如何尽可能的增加超导量子比特的退相干时间, 大规模的集成超导量子比特已成为超导量子计算研究的主要方向. 超导量子比特作为宏观的人工原子, 有许多量子光学现象都能够在其中观测到. 利用超导量子比特实现电磁感应透明为研究超导量子比特的退相干机理提供了新手段, 为研究非线性光学、光存储、光的超慢速传输等量子光学效应开辟了新思路. 本文介绍了电磁感应透明的理论基础, 总结了目前针对超导量子比特的电磁感应透明研究进展, 对比了一般气体原子与超导量子比特的电磁感应透明区别, 并对超导量子比特实现电磁感应透明的潜在应用进行了总结和展望.     

Extracting Past-Future Vacuum Correlations Using Circuit QED

We propose a realistic circuit QED experiment to test the extraction of past-future vacuum entanglement to a pair of superconducting qubits. The qubit P interacts with the quantum field along an open transmission line for an interval T_{on} and then, after a time-lapse T_{off}, the qubit F starts interacting for a time T_{on} in a symmetric fashion. After that, past-future quantum correlations will have transferred to the qubits, even if the qubits do not coexist at the same time. We show that this experiment can be realized with current technology and discuss its utility as a possible implementation of a quantum memory.     

Characterization of topological phase of superlattices in superconducting circuits

The recent experimental observation of topological magnon insulator states in a superconducting circuit chain marks a breakthrough for topological physics with qubits, in which a dimerized qubit chain has been realized. Here, we extend such a dimer lattice to superlattice with arbitrary number of qubits in each unit cell in superconducting circuits, which exhibits rich topological properties. Specifically, by considering a quadrimeric superlattice, we show that the topological invariant (winding number) can be effectively characterized by the dynamics of the single-excitation quantum state through time-dependent quantities. Moreover, we explore the appearance and detection of the topological protected edge states in such a multiband qubit system. Finally, we also demonstrate the stable Bloch-like-oscillation of multiple interface states induced by the interference of them. Our proposal can be readily realized in experiment and may pave the way towards the investigation of topological quantum phases and topologically protected quantum information processing.     

Vacuum Rabi oscillations in a macroscopic superconducting qubit oscillator system

We have observed the coherent exchange of a single energy quantum between a flux qubit and a superconducting LC circuit acting as a quantum harmonic oscillator. The exchange of an energy quantum is known as the vacuum Rabi oscillation: the qubit is oscillating between the excited state and the ground state and the oscillator between the vacuum state and the first excited state. We also show that we can detect the state of the oscillator with the qubit and thereby obtained evidence of level quantization of the LC circuit. Our results support the idea of using oscillators as couplers of solid-state qubits.     

Distributed quantum computation with superconducting qubit via LC circuit using dressed states

A scheme is proposed where two superconducting qubits driven by a classical field interacting separately with two distant LC circuits connected by another LC circuit through mutual inductance,are used for implementing quantum gates.By using dressed states,quantum state transfer and quantum entangling gate can be implemented.With the help of the time-dependent electromagnetic field,any two dressed qubits can be selectively coupled to the data bus (the last LC circuit),then quantum state can be transferred from one dressed qubit to another and multi-mode entangled state can also be formed.As a result,the promising perspectives for quantum information processing of mesoscopic superconducting qubits are obtained and the distributed and scalable quantum computation can be implemented in this scheme.     

Topological quantum memory interfacing atomic and superconducting qubits

We propose a scheme to manipulate a topological spin qubit which is realized with cold atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice. In particular, by introducing a quantum opto-electro-mechanical interface, we are able to first transfer a superconducting qubit state to an atomic qubit state and then to store it into the topological spin qubit. In this way, an efficient topological quantum memory could be constructed for the superconducting qubit. Therefore, we can consolidate the advantages of both the noise resistance of the topological qubits and the scalability of the superconducting qubits in this hybrid architecture.     

Superconducting qubit with Purcell protection and tunable coupling

We present a superconducting qubit for the circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture that has a tunable qubit-resonator coupling strength g. This coupling can be tuned from zero to values that are comparable with other superconducting qubits. At g = 0, the qubit is in a decoherence-free subspace with respect to spontaneous emission induced by the Purcell effect. Furthermore, we show that in this decoherence-free subspace, the state of the qubit can still be measured by either a dispersive shift on the resonance frequency of the resonator or by a cycling-type measurement.     

State tomography of capacitively shunted phase qubits with high fidelity

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.     

Hardware for multi-superconducting qubit control and readout

We have developed an electronic hardware system for the control and readout of multi-superconducting qubit devices. The hardware system is based on the design ideas of good scalability, high synchronization and low latency. The system, housed inside a VPX-6U chassis, includes multiple arbitrary-waveform generator (AWG) channels, analog-digital-converter (ADC) channels as well as direct current source channels. The system can be used for the control and readout of up to twelve superconducting transmon qubits in one chassis, and control and readout of more and more qubit can be carried out by interconnecting the chassis. By using field programmable gate array (FPGA) processors, the system incorporates three features that are specifically useful for superconducting qubit research. Firstly, qubit signals can be processed using the on-board FPGA after being acquired by ADCs, significantly reducing data processing time and data amount for storage and transmission. Secondly, different output modes, such as direct output and sequential output modes, of AWG can be implemented with pre-encoded FPGA. Thirdly, with data acquisition ADCs and control AWGs jointly controlled by the same FPGA, the feedback latency can be reduced, and in our test a 178.4 ns latency time is realized. This is very useful for future quantum feedback experiments. Finally, we demonstrate the functionality of the system by applying the system to the control and readout of a 10 qubit superconducting quantum processor.     

Transferring quantum entangled states between multiple single-photon-state qubits and coherent-state qubits in circuit QED

We present a way to transfer maximally- or partially-entangled states of n single-photon-state (SPS) qubits onto ncoherent-state (CS) qubits, by employing 2nmicrowave cavities coupled to a superconducting flux qutrit. The two logic states of a SPS qubit here are represented by the vacuum state and the single-photon state of a cavity, while the two logic states of a CS qubit are encoded with two coherent states of a cavity. Because of using only one superconducting qutrit as the coupler, the circuit architecture is significantly simplified. The operation time for the state transfer does not increase with the increasing of the number of qubits. When the dissipation of the system is negligible, the quantum state can be transferred in a deterministic way since no measurement is required. Furthermore, the higher-energy intermediate level of the coupler qutrit is not excited during the entire operation and thus decoherence from the qutrit is greatly suppressed. As a specific example, we numerically demonstrate that the high-fidelity transfer of a Bell state of two SPS qubits onto two CS qubits is achievable within the present-day circuit QED technology. Finally, it is worthy to note that when the dissipation is negligible, entangled states of n CS qubits can be transferred back onto n SPS qubits by performing reverse operations. This proposal is quite general and can be extended to accomplish the same task, by employing a natural or artificial atom to couple 2nmicrowave or optical cavities.     

Nanoscale superconducting quantum bits

Various physical systems were proposed for quantum information processing. Among those nanoscale devices appear most promising for integration in electronic circuits and large-scale applications. We discuss Josephson junction circuits in two regimes where they can be used for quantum computing. These systems combine intrinsic coherence of the superconducting state with control possibilities of single-charge circuits. In the regime where the typical charging energy dominates over the Josephson coupling, the low-temperature dynamics is limited to two states differing by a Cooper-pair charge on a superconducting island. In the opposite regime of prevailing Josephson energy, the phase (or flux) degree of freedom can be used to store and process quantum information. Under suitable conditions the system reduces to two states with different flux configurations. Several qubits can be joined together into a register. The quantum state of a qubit register can be manipulated by voltage and magnetic field pulses. The qubits are inevitably coupled to the environment. However, estimates of the phase coherence time show that many elementary quantum logic operations can be performed before the phase coherence is lost. In addition to manipulations, the final state of the qubits has to be read out. This quantum measurement process can be accomplished using a single-electron transistor for charge Josephson qubits, and a d.c.-SQUID for flux qubits. Recent successful experiments with superconducting qubits demonstrate for the first time quantum coherence in macroscopic systems.     

Measurement of Spin Singlet-Triplet Qubit in Quantum Dots Using Superconducting Resonator

The spin qubit in quantum dots is one of the leading platforms for quantum computation.A crucial requirement for scalable quantum information processing is the high efficient measurement.Here we analyze the measurement process of a quantum-dot spin qubit coupled to a superconducting transmission line resonator.Especially,the phase shift of the resonator is sensitive to the spin states and the gate operations.The response of the resonator can be used to measure the spin qubit efficiently,which can be extend to read out the multiple spin qubits in a scalable solid-state quantum processor.     

One‐Step Implementation of N‐Qubit Nonadiabatic Holonomic Quantum Gates with Superconducting Qubits via Inverse Hamiltonian Engineering

A protocol is proposed to realize one‐step implementation of the N‐qubit nonadiabatic holonomic quantum gates with superconducting qubits. The inverse Hamiltonian engineering is applied in designing microwave pulses to drive superconducting qubits. By combining curve fitting, the wave shapes of the designed pulses can be described by simple functions, which are not hard to realize in experiments. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the protocol, a three‐qubit holonomic controlled π‐phase gate is taken as an example in numerical simulations. The results show that the protocol holds robustness against noise and decoherence. Therefore, the protocol may provide an alternative approach for implementing N‐qubit nonadiabatic holonomic quantum gates.