Galvanic Phase Coupling of Superconducting Flux Qubits

We investigate the galvanic coupling schemes of superconducting flux qubits. From the fundamental boundary conditions, we obtain the effective potential of the coupled system of two or three flux qubits to provide the exact Lagrangian of the system. While usually the two-qubit gate has been investigated approximately, in this study we derive the exact inductive coupling strength between two flux qubits coupled directly and coupled through a connecting central loop. We observe that the inductive coupling strength needs to be included exactly to satisfy the criteria of fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Clifford Circuit Optimization with Templates and Symbolic Pauli Gates

The Clifford group is a finite subgroup of the unitary group generated by the Hadamard, the CNOT, and the Phase gates. This group plays a prominent role in quantum error correction, randomized benchmarking protocols, and the study of entanglement. Here we consider the problem of finding a short quantum circuit implementing a given Clifford group element. Our methods aim to minimize the entangling gate count assuming all-to-all qubit connectivity. First, we consider circuit optimization based on template matching and design Clifford-specific templates that leverage the ability to factor out Pauli and SWAP gates. Second, we introduce a symbolic peephole optimization method. It works by projecting the full circuit onto a small subset of qubits and optimally recompiling the projected subcircuit via dynamic programming. CNOT gates coupling the chosen subset of qubits with the remaining qubits are expressed using symbolic Pauli gates. Software implementation of these methods finds circuits that are only 0.2% away from optimal for 6 qubits and reduces the two-qubit gate count in circuits with up to 64 qubits by 64.7% on average, compared with the Aaronson-Gottesman canonical form.

Entanglement across separate silicon dies in a modular superconducting qubit device

Assembling future large-scale quantum computers out of smaller, specialized modules promises to simplify a number of formidable science and engineering challenges. One of the primary challenges in developing a modular architecture is in engineering high fidelity, low-latency quantum interconnects between modules. Here we demonstrate a modular solid state architecture with deterministic inter-module coupling between four physically separate, interchangeable superconducting qubit integrated circuits, achieving two-qubit gate fidelities as high as 99.1 ± 0.5% and 98.3 ± 0.3% for iSWAP and CZ entangling gates, respectively. The quality of the inter-module entanglement is further confirmed by a demonstration of Bell-inequality violation for disjoint pairs of entangled qubits across the four separate silicon dies. Having proven out the fundamental building blocks, this work provides the technological foundations for a modular quantum processor: technology which will accelerate near-term experimental efforts and open up new paths to the fault-tolerant era for solid state qubit architectures.

Two-qubit sweet spots for capacitively coupled exchange-only spin qubits

The implementation of high fidelity two-qubit gates is a bottleneck in the progress toward universal quantum computation in semiconductor quantum dot qubits. We study capacitive coupling between two triple quantum dot spin qubits encoded in the S = 1/2, Sz = −1/2 decoherence-free subspace—the exchange-only (EO) spin qubits. We report exact gate sequences for CPHASE and CNOT gates, and demonstrate theoretically, the existence of multiple two-qubit sweet spots (2QSS) in the parameter space of capacitively coupled EO qubits. Gate operations have the advantage of being all-electrical, but charge noise that couple to electrical parameters of the qubits cause decoherence. Assuming noise with a 1/f spectrum, two-qubit gate fidelities and times are calculated, which provide useful information on the noise threshold necessary for fault-tolerance. We study two-qubit gates at single and multiple parameter 2QSS. In particular, for two existing EO implementations—the resonant exchange (RX) and the always-on exchange-only (AEON) qubits—we compare two-qubit gate fidelities and times at positions in parameter space where the 2QSS are simultaneously single-qubit sweet spots (1QSS) for the RX and AEON. These results provide a potential route to the realization of high fidelity quantum computation.

Practical Security of RSA Against NTC-Architecture Quantum Computing Attacks

Quantum algorithms can greatly speed up computation in solving some classical problems, while the computational power of quantum computers should also be restricted by laws of physics. Due to quantum time-energy uncertainty relation, there is a lower limit of the evolution time for a given quantum operation, and therefore the time complexity must be considered when the number of serial quantum operations is particularly large. When the key length is about at the level of KB (encryption and decryption can be completed in a few minutes by using standard programs), it will take at least 50-100 years for NTC (Neighbor-only, Two-qubit gate, Concurrent) architecture ion-trap quantum computers to execute Shor’s algorithm. For NTC architecture superconducting quantum computers with a code distance 27 for error-correcting, when the key length increased to 16 KB, the cracking time will also increase to 100 years that far exceeds the coherence time. This shows the robustness of the updated RSA against practical quantum computing attacks.

Coherent control of a donor-molecule electron spin qubit in silicon

Donor spins in silicon provide a promising material platform for large scale quantum computing. Excellent electron spin coherence times of $${T}_{2}^{* }=268$$ T 2 * = 268 μs with fidelities of 99.9% have been demonstrated for isolated phosphorus donors in isotopically pure 28Si, where donors are local-area-implanted in a nanoscale MOS device. Despite robust single qubit gates, realising two-qubit exchange gates using this technique is challenging due to the statistical nature of the dopant implant and placement process. In parallel a precision scanning probe lithography route has been developed to place single donors and donor molecules on one atomic plane of silicon with high accuracy aligned to heavily phosphorus doped silicon in-plane gates. Recent results using this technique have demonstrated a fast (0.8 ns) two-qubit gate with two P donor molecules placed 13 nm apart in natSi. In this paper we demonstrate a single qubit gate with coherent oscillations of the electron spin on a P donor molecule in natSi patterned by scanning tunneling microscope (STM) lithography. The electron spin exhibits excellent coherence properties, with a $${T}_{2}$$ T 2 decoherence time of 298 ± 30 μs, and $${T}_{2}^{* }$$ T 2 * dephasing time of 295 ± 23 ns.

Controls of a superconducting quantum parametron under a strong pump field

Pumped at approximately twice the natural frequency, a Josephson parametric oscillator called parametron or Kerr parametric oscillator shows self-oscillation. Quantum annealing and universal quantum computation using self-oscillating parametrons as qubits were proposed. However, controls of parametrons under the pump field are degraded by unwanted rapidly oscillating terms in the Hamiltonian, which we call non-resonant rapidly oscillating terms (NROTs) coming from the violation of the rotating wave approximation. Therefore, the pump field can be an intrinsic origin of the imperfection of controls of parametrons. Here, we theoretically study the influence of the NROTs on the accuracy of controls of a parametron: a cat-state creation and a single-qubit gate. It is shown that there is a trade-off relationship between the suppression of the nonadiabatic transitions and the validity of the rotating wave approximation in a conventional approach. We also show that the tailored time dependence of the detuning of the pump field can suppress both of the nonadiabatic transitions and the disturbance of the state of the parametron due to the NROTs.

Lightweight Detection of a Small Number of Large Errors in a Quantum Circuit

Suppose we want to implement a unitary U, for instance a circuit for some quantum algorithm. Suppose our actual implementation is a unitary U~, which we can only apply as a black-box. In general it is an exponentially-hard task to decide whether U~ equals the intended U, or is significantly different in a worst-case norm. In this paper we consider two special cases where relatively efficient and lightweight procedures exist for this task.First, we give an efficient procedure under the assumption that U and U~ (both of which we can now apply as a black-box) are either equal, or differ significantly in only one k-qubit gate, where k=O(1) (the k qubits need not be contiguous). Second, we give an even more lightweight procedure under the assumption that U and U~ are Clifford circuits which are either equal, or different in arbitrary ways (the specification of U is now classically given while U~ can still only be applied as a black-box). Both procedures only need to run U~ a constant number of times to detect a constant error in a worst-case norm. We note that the Clifford result also follows from earlier work of Flammia and Liu, and da Silva, Landon-Cardinal, and Poulin.In the Clifford case, our error-detection procedure also allows us efficiently to learn (and hence correct) U~ if we have a small list of possible errors that could have happened to U; for example if we know that only O(1) of the gates of U~ are wrong, this list will be polynomially small and we can test each possible erroneous version of U for equality with U~.