No Arabic abstract
Complex integrated circuits require multiple wiring layers. In complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) processing, these layers are robustly separated by amorphous dielectrics. These dielectrics would dominate energy loss in superconducting integrated circuits. Here we demonstrate a procedure that capitalizes on the structural benefits of inter-layer dielectrics during fabrication and mitigates the added loss. We separate and support multiple wiring layers throughout fabrication using SiO$_2$ scaffolding, then remove it post-fabrication. This technique is compatible with foundry level processing and the can be generalized to make many different forms of low-loss multi-layer wiring. We use this technique to create freestanding aluminum vacuum gap crossovers (airbridges). We characterize the added capacitive loss of these airbridges by connecting ground planes over microwave frequency $lambda/4$ coplanar waveguide resonators and measuring resonator loss. We measure a low power resonator loss of $sim 3.9 times 10^{-8}$ per bridge, which is 100 times lower than dielectric supported bridges. We further characterize these airbridges as crossovers, control line jumpers, and as part of a coupling network in gmon and fuxmon qubits. We measure qubit characteristic lifetimes ($T_1$s) in excess of 30 $mu$s in gmon devices.
Lossy dielectrics are a significant source of decoherence in superconducting quantum circuits. In this report, we model and compare the dielectric loss in bulk and interfacial dielectrics in titanium nitride (TiN) and aluminum (Al) superconducting coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonators. We fabricate isotropically trenched resonators to produce a series of device geometries that accentuate a specific dielectric regions contribution to resonator quality factor. While each dielectric region contributes significantly to loss in TiN devices, the metal-air interface dominates the loss in the Al devices. Furthermore, we evaluate the quality factor of each TiN resonator geometry with and without a post-process hydrofluoric (HF) etch, and find that it reduced losses from the substrate-air interface, thereby improving the quality factor.
The investigation of two-level-state (TLS) loss in dielectric materials and interfaces remains at the forefront of materials research in superconducting quantum circuits. We demonstrate a method of TLS loss extraction of a thin film dielectric by measuring a lumped element resonator fabricated from a superconductor-dielectric-superconductor trilayer. We extract the dielectric loss by formulating a circuit model for a lumped element resonator with TLS loss and then fitting to this model using measurements from a set of three resonator designs: a coplanar waveguide resonator, a lumped element resonator with an interdigitated capacitor, and a lumped element resonator with a parallel plate capacitor that includes the dielectric thin film of interest. Unlike other methods, this allows accurate measurement of materials with TLS loss lower than $10^{-6}$. We demonstrate this method by extracting a TLS loss of $1.02 times 10^{-3}$ for sputtered $mathrm{Al_2O_3}$ using a set of samples fabricated from an $mathrm{Al/Al_2O_3/Al}$ trilayer. We observe a difference of 11$%$ between extracted loss of the trilayer with and without the implementation of this method.
We introduce a new entangling gate between two fixed-frequency qubits statically coupled via a microwave resonator bus which combines the following desirable qualities: all-microwave control, appreciable qubit separation for reduction of crosstalk and leakage errors, and the ability to function as a two-qubit conditional-phase gate. A fixed, always-on interaction is explicitly designed between higher energy (non-computational) states of two transmon qubits, and then a conditional-phase gate is `activated on the otherwise unperturbed qubit subspace via a microwave drive. We implement this microwave-activated conditional-phase gate with a fidelity from quantum process tomography of 87%.
Superconducting quantum circuits are typically housed in conducting enclosures in order to control their electromagnetic environment. As devices grow in physical size, the electromagnetic modes of the enclosure come down in frequency and can introduce unwanted long-range cross-talk between distant elements of the enclosed circuit. Incorporating arrays of inductive shunts such as through-substrate vias or machined pillars can suppress these effects by raising these mode frequencies. Here, we derive simple, accurate models for the modes of enclosures that incorporate such inductive-shunt arrays. We use these models to predict that cavity-mediated inter-qubit couplings and drive-line cross-talk are exponentially suppressed with distance for arbitrarily large quantum circuits housed in such enclosures, indicating the promise of this approach for quantum computing. We find good agreement with a finite-element simulation of an example device containing more than 400 qubits.
The realization of a coherent interface between distant charge or spin qubits in semiconductor quantum dots is an open challenge for quantum information processing. Here we demonstrate both resonant and non-resonant photon-mediated coherent interactions between double quantum dot charge qubits separated by several tens of micrometers. We present clear spectroscopic evidence of the collective enhancement of the resonant coupling of two qubits. With both qubits detuned from the resonator we observe exchange coupling between the qubits mediated by virtual photons. In both instances pronounced bright and dark states governed by the symmetry of the qubit-field interaction are found. Our observations are in excellent quantitative agreement with master-equation simulations. The extracted two-qubit coupling strengths significantly exceed the linewidths of the combined resonator-qubit system. This indicates that this approach is viable for creating photon-mediated two-qubit gates in quantum dot based systems.