No Arabic abstract
Present-day, noisy, small or intermediate-scale quantum processors---although far from fault-tolerant---support the execution of heuristic quantum algorithms, which might enable a quantum advantage, for example, when applied to combinatorial optimization problems. On small-scale quantum processors, validations of such algorithms serve as important technology demonstrators. We implement the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) on our hardware platform, consisting of two superconducting transmon qubits and one parametrically modulated coupler. We solve small instances of the NP-complete exact-cover problem, with 96.6% success probability, by iterating the algorithm up to level two.
Superconducting circuits have become a leading quantum technology for testing fundamentals of quantum mechanics and for the implementation of advanced quantum information protocols. In this chapter, we revise the basic concepts of circuit network theory and circuit quantum electrodynamics for the sake of digital and analog quantum simulations of quantum field theories, relativistic quantum mechanics, and many-body physics, involving fermions and bosons. Based on recent improvements in scalability, controllability, and measurement, superconducting circuits can be considered as a promising quantum platform for building scalable digital and analog quantum simulators, enjoying unique and distinctive properties when compared to other advanced platforms as trapped ions, quantum photonics and optical lattices.
Arrays of circuit cavities offer fascinating perspectives for exploring quantum many-body systems in a driven dissipative regime where excitation losses are continuously compensated by coherent input drives. Here we investigate a system consisting of three transmission line resonators, where the two outer ones are driven by coherent input sources and the central resonator interacts with a superconducting qubit. Whereas a low excitation number regime of such a device has been considered previously with a numerical integration, we here specifically address the high excitation density regime. We present analytical approximations to these regimes in the form of two methods. The first method is a Bogoliubov or linear expansion in quantum fluctuations which can be understood as an approximation for weak nonlinearities. As the second method we introduce a combination of mean-field decoupling for the photon tunneling with an exact approach to a driven Kerr nonlinearity which can be understood as an approximation for low tunneling rates. In contrast to the low excitation regime we find that for high excitation numbers the anti-bunching of output photons from the central cavity does not monotonously disappear as the tunnel coupling between the resonators is increased.
Significant advances in coherence have made superconducting quantum circuits a viable platform for fault-tolerant quantum computing. To further extend capabilities, highly coherent quantum systems could act as quantum memories for these circuits. A useful quantum memory must be rapidly addressable by qubits, while maintaining superior coherence. We demonstrate a novel superconducting microwave cavity architecture that is highly robust against major sources of loss that are encountered in the engineering of circuit QED systems. The architecture allows for near-millisecond storage of quantum states in a resonator while strong coupling between the resonator and a transmon qubit enables control, encoding, and readout at MHz rates. The observed coherence times constitute an improvement of almost an order of magnitude over those of the best available superconducting qubits. Our design is an ideal platform for studying coherent quantum optics and marks an important step towards hardware-efficient quantum computing with Josephson junction-based quantum circuits.
Simulating quantum physics with a device which itself is quantum mechanical, a notion Richard Feynman originated, would be an unparallelled computational resource. However, the universal quantum simulation of fermionic systems is daunting due to their particle statistics, and Feynman left as an open question whether it could be done, because of the need for non-local control. Here, we implement fermionic interactions with digital techniques in a superconducting circuit. Focusing on the Hubbard model, we perform time evolution with constant interactions as well as a dynamic phase transition with up to four fermionic modes encoded in four qubits. The implemented digital approach is universal and allows for the efficient simulation of fermions in arbitrary spatial dimensions. We use in excess of 300 single-qubit and two-qubit gates, and reach global fidelities which are limited by gate errors. This demonstration highlights the feasibility of the digital approach and opens a viable route towards analog-digital quantum simulation of interacting fermions and bosons in large-scale solid state systems.
Building a quantum computer is a daunting challenge since it requires good control but also good isolation from the environment to minimize decoherence. It is therefore important to realize quantum gates efficiently, using as few operations as possible, to reduce the amount of required control and operation time and thus improve the quantum state coherence. Here we propose a superconducting circuit for implementing a tunable system consisting of a qutrit coupled to two qubits. This system can efficiently accomplish various quantum information tasks, including generation of entanglement of the two qubits and conditional three-qubit quantum gates, such as the Toffoli and Fredkin gates. Furthermore, the system realizes a conditional geometric gate which may be used for holonomic (non-adiabatic) quantum computing. The efficiency, robustness and universality of the presented circuit makes it a promising candidate to serve as a building block for larger networks capable of performing involved quantum computational tasks.