No Arabic abstract
Superconducting quantum circuits is one of the leading candidates for a universal quantum computer. Designing novel qubit and multiqubit superconducting circuits requires the ability to simulate and analyze the properties of a general circuit. In particular, going outside the transmon approach, we cannot make assumptions on anharmonicity, thus precluding blackbox quantization approaches and necessitating the formal circuit quantization approach. We consider and solve two issues involved in simulating general superconducting circuits. One of the issues is the handling of free modes in the circuit, that is, circuit modes with no potential term in the Hamiltonian. Another issue is circuit size, namely the challenge of simulating strongly coupled multimode circuits. The main mathematical tool we use to address these issues is the linear canonical transformation in the setting of quantum mechanics. We address the first issue by giving a provably correct algorithm for removing free modes by performing a linear canonical transformation to completely decouple the free modes from other circuit modes. We address the second by giving a series of different linear canonical transformations to reduce intermode couplings, thereby reducing the problem to the weakly coupled case and greatly mitigating the overhead for classical simulation. We benchmark our decoupling methods by applying them to the circuit of two inductively coupled fluxonium qubits, obtaining several orders of magnitude reduction in the size of the Hilbert space that needs to be simulated.
In a recent breakthrough, Bravyi, Gosset and K{o}nig (BGK) [Science, 2018] proved that simulating constant depth quantum circuits takes classical circuits $Omega(log n)$ depth. In our paper, we first formalise their notion of simulation, which we call possibilistic simulation. Then, from well-known results, we deduce that their circuits can be simulated in depth $O(log^{2} n)$. Separately, we construct explicit classical circuits that can simulate any depth-$d$ quantum circuit with Clifford and $t$ $T$-gates in depth $O(d+t)$. Our classical circuits use ${text{NOT, AND, OR}}$ gates of fan-in $leq 2$.
We generalize solid-state tight-binding techniques for the spectral analysis of large superconducting circuits. We find that tight-binding states can be better suited for approximating the low-energy excitations than charge-basis states, as illustrated for the interesting example of the current-mirror circuit. The use of tight binding can dramatically lower the Hilbert space dimension required for convergence to the true spectrum, and allows for the accurate simulation of larger circuits that are out of reach of charge basis diagonalization.
Quantum-limited Josephson parametric amplifiers are crucial components in circuit QED readout chains. The dynamic range of state-of-the-art parametric amplifiers is limited by signal-induced Stark shifts that detune the amplifier from its operating point. Using a Superconducting Nonlinear Asymmetric Inductive eLement (SNAIL) as an active component, we show the ability to in situ tune the device flux and pump to a dressed Kerr-free operating point, which provides a 10-fold increase in the number of photons that can be processed by our amplifier, compared to the nominal working point. Our proposed and experimentally verified methodology of Kerr-free three-wave mixing can be extended to improve the dynamic range of other pumped operations in quantum superconducting circuits.
We calculate the quantum Cramer--Rao bound for the sensitivity with which one or several parameters, encoded in a general single-mode Gaussian state, can be estimated. This includes in particular the interesting case of mixed Gaussian states. We apply the formula to the problems of estimating phase, purity, loss, amplitude, and squeezing. In the case of the simultaneous measurement of several parameters, we provide the full quantum Fisher information matrix. Our results unify previously known partial results, and constitute a complete solution to the problem of knowing the best possible sensitivity of measurements based on a single-mode Gaussian state.
A general method to mitigate the effect of errors in quantum circuits is outlined. The method is developed in sight of characteristics that an ideal method should possess and to ameliorate an existing method which only mitigates state preparation and measurement errors. The method is tested on different IBM Q quantum devices, using randomly generated circuits with up to four qubits. A large majority of results show significant error mitigation.