No Arabic abstract
The implementation of a Lambda scheme in superconducting artificial atoms could allow detec- tion of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) and other quantum manipulations in the microwave regime. However symmetries which on one hand protect the system against decoherence, yield selection rules which may cancel coupling to the pump external drive. The tradeoff between efficient coupling and decoherence due to broad-band colored Noise (BBCN), which is often the main source of decoherence is addressed, in the class of nanodevices based on the Cooper pair box (CPB) design. We study transfer efficiency by STIRAP, showing that substantial efficiency is achieved for off-symmetric bias only in the charge-phase regime. We find a number of results uniquely due to non-Markovianity of BBCN, namely: (a) the efficiency for STIRAP depends essentially on noise channels in the trapped subspace; (b) low-frequency fluctuations can be analyzed and represented as fictitious correlated fluctuations of the detunings of the external drives; (c) a simple figure of merit for design and operating prescriptions allowing the observation of STIRAP is proposed. The emerging physical picture also applies to other classes of coherent nanodevices subject to BBCN.
For successful realization of a quantum computer, its building blocks (qubits) should be simultaneously scalable and sufficiently protected from environmental noise. Recently, a novel approach to the protection of superconducting qubits has been proposed. The idea is to prevent errors at the hardware level, by building a fault-free (topologically protected) logical qubit from faulty physical qubits with properly engineered interactions between them. It has been predicted that the decoupling of a protected logical qubit from local noises would grow exponentially with the number of physical qubits. Here we report on the proof-of-concept experiments with a prototype device which consists of twelve physical qubits made of nanoscale Josephson junctions. We observed that due to properly tuned quantum fluctuations, this qubit is protected against magnetic flux variations well beyond linear order, in agreement with theoretical predictions. These results demonstrate the feasibility of topologically protected superconducting qubits.
In this paper we propose a new protocol to achieve coherent population transfer between two states in a three-level atom by using two ac fields. It is based on the physics of Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP), but it is implemented with the constraint of a reduced control, namely one of the fields cannot be switched off. A combination of frequency chirps is used with resonant fields, allowing to achieve approximate destructive interference, despite of the fact that an exact dark state does not exist. This new chirped STIRAP protocol is tailored for applications to artificial atoms, where architectures with several elementary units can be strongly coupled but where the possibility of switching on and off such couplings is often very limited. Demonstration of this protocol would be a benchmark for the implementation of a class of multilevel advanced control procedures for quantum computation and microwave quantum photonics in artificial atoms.
Heat is detrimental for the operation of quantum systems, yet it fundamentally behaves according to quantum mechanics, being phase coherent and universally quantum-limited regardless of its carriers. Due to their robustness, superconducting circuits integrating dissipative elements are ideal candidates to emulate many-body phenomena in quantum heat transport, hitherto scarcely explored experimentally. However, their ability to tackle the underlying full physical richness is severely hindered by the exclusive use of a magnetic flux as a control parameter and requires complementary approaches. Here, we introduce a dual, magnetic field-free circuit where charge quantization in a superconducting island enables thorough electric field control. We thus tune the thermal conductance, close to its quantum limit, of a single photonic channel between two mesoscopic reservoirs. We observe heat flow oscillations originating from the competition between Cooper-pair tunnelling and Coulomb repulsion in the island, well captured by a simple model. Our results demonstrate that the duality between charge and flux extends to heat transport, with promising applications in thermal management of quantum devices.
Tunneling two level systems (TLS), present in dielectrics at low temperatures, have been recently studied for fundamental understanding and superconducting device development. According to a recent theory by Burin textit{et al.}, the TLS bath of any amorphous dielectric experiences a distribution of Landau-Zener transitions if exposed to simultaneous fields. In this experiment we measure amorphous insulating films at millikelvin temperatures with a microwave field and a swept electric field bias using a superconducting resonator. We find that the maximum dielectric loss per microwave photon with the simultaneous fields is approximately the same as that in the equilibrium state, in agreement with the generic material theory. In addition, we find that the loss depends on the fields in a way which allows for the separate extraction of the TLS bath dipole moment and density of states. This method allows for the study of the TLS dipole moment in a diverse set of disordered films, and provides a technique for continuously inverting their population.
In a Rabi oscillation experiment with a superconducting qubit we show that a visibility in the qubit excited state population of more than 90 % can be attained. We perform a dispersive measurement of the qubit state by coupling the qubit non-resonantly to a transmission line resonator and probing the resonator transmission spectrum. The measurement process is well characterized and quantitatively understood. The qubit coherence time is determined to be larger than 500 ns in a measurement of Ramsey fringes.