No Arabic abstract
We present a method for measuring the internal state of a superconducting qubit inside an on-chip microwave resonator. We show that one qubit state can be associated with the generation of an increasingly large cavity coherent field, while the other remains associated with the vacuum. By measuring the outgoing resonator field with conventional devices, an efficient single-shot QND-like qubit readout can be achieved, enabling a high-fidelity measurement in the spirit of the electron-shelving technique for trapped ions. We expect that the proposed ideas can be adapted to different superconducting qubit designs and contribute to the further improvement of qubit readout fidelity.
We introduce a systematic formalism for two-resonator circuit QED, where two on-chip microwave resonators are simultaneously coupled to one superconducting qubit. Within this framework, we demonstrate that the qubit can function as a quantum switch between the two resonators, which are assumed to be originally independent. In this three-circuit network, the qubit mediates a geometric second-order circuit interaction between the otherwise decoupled resonators. In the dispersive regime, it also gives rise to a dynamic second-order perturbative interaction. The geometric and dynamic coupling strengths can be tuned to be equal, thus permitting to switch on and off the interaction between the two resonators via a qubit population inversion or a shifting of the qubit operation point. We also show that our quantum switch represents a flexible architecture for the manipulation and generation of nonclassical microwave field states as well as the creation of controlled multipartite entanglement in circuit QED. In addition, we clarify the role played by the geometric interaction, which constitutes a fundamental property characteristic of superconducting quantum circuits without counterpart in quantum-optical systems. We develop a detailed theory of the geometric second-order coupling by means of circuit transformations for superconducting charge and flux qubits. Furthermore, we show the robustness of the quantum switch operation with respect to decoherence mechanisms. Finally, we propose a realistic design for a two-resonator circuit QED setup based on a flux qubit and estimate all the related parameters. In this manner, we show that this setup can be used to implement a superconducting quantum switch with available technology.
In this paper we derive an effective master equation and quantum trajectory equation for multiple qubits in a single resonator and in the large resonator decay limit. We show that homodyne measurement of the resonator transmission is a weak measurement of the collective qubit inversion. As an example of this result, we focus on the case of two qubits and show how this measurement can be used to generate an entangled state from an initially separable state. This is realized without relying on an entangling Hamiltonian. We show that, for {em current} experimental values of both the decoherence and measurement rates, this approach can be used to generate highly entangled states. This scheme takes advantage of the fact that one of the Bell states is decoherence-free under Purcell decay.
We propose the implementation of fast resonant gates in circuit quantum electrodynamics for quantum information processing. We show how a suitable utilization of three-level superconducting qubits inside a resonator constitutes a key tool to perform diverse two-qubit resonant gates, improving the operation speed when compared to slower dispersive techniques. To illustrate the benefit of resonant two-qubit gates in circuit QED, we consider the implementation of a two-dimensional cluster state in an array of N x N superconducting qubits by using resonant controlled-phase (CPHASE) and one-qubit gates, where the generation time grows linearly with N. For N=3, and taking into account decoherence mechanisms, a fidelity over 60% for the generation of this cluster state is obtained.
Extending the qubit coherence times is a crucial task in building quantum information processing devices. In the three-dimensional cavity implementations of circuit QED, the coherence of superconducting qubits was improved dramatically due to cutting the losses associated with the photon emission. Next frontier in improving the coherence includes the mitigation of the adverse effects of superconducting quasiparticles. In these lectures, we review the basics of the quasiparticles dynamics, their interaction with the qubit degree of freedom, their contribution to the qubit relaxation rates, and approaches to control their effect.
We study the decoherence of a superconducting qubit due to the dispersive coupling to a damped harmonic oscillator. We go beyond the weak qubit-oscillator coupling, which we associate with a phase Purcell effect, and enter into a strong coupling regime, with qualitatively different behavior of the dephasing rate. We identify and give a physicaly intuitive discussion of both decoherence mechanisms. Our results can be applied, with small adaptations, to a large variety of other physical systems, e. g. trapped ions and cavity QED, boosting theoretical and experimental decoherence studies.