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Schuster, David I.

Publications and source records attributed to Schuster, David I..

At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Superconducting Qubits above 20 GHz Operating over 200 mK

Current state-of-the-art superconducting microwave qubits are cooled to extremely low temperatures to avoid sources of decoherence. Higher qubit operating temperatures would significantly increase the cooling power available, which is desirable for scaling up the number of qubits in quantum computing architectures and integrating qubits in experiments requiring increased heat dissipation. To operate superconducting qubits at higher temperatures, it is necessary to address both quasiparticle decoherence (which becomes significant for aluminum junctions above 160 mK) and dephasing from thermal microwave photons (which are problematic above 50 mK). Using low-loss niobium-trilayer junctions, which have reduced sensitivity to quasiparticles due to the higher superconducting transition temperature of niobium, we fabricate transmons with higher frequencies than previously studied, up to 24 GHz. We measure decoherence and dephasing times of about 1 μs, corresponding to average qubit quality factors of approximately 10 5 , and find that decoherence is unaffected by quasiparticles up to 1 K. Without relaxation from quasiparticles, we are able to explore dephasing from purely thermal sources, finding that our qubits can operate up to approximately 250 mK while maintaining similar performance. The thermal resilience of these qubits creates new options for scaling up quantum processors, enables hybrid quantum experiments with high heat-dissipation budgets, and introduces a material platform for even-higher-frequency qubits.

Josephson junctions↗
DOE OSTI2024

Autonomous stabilization with programmable stabilized state

Reservoir engineering is a powerful technique to autonomously stabilize a quantum state. Traditional schemes involving multi-body states typically function for discrete entangled states. In this work, we enhance the stabilization capability to a continuous manifold of states with programmable stabilized state selection using multiple continuous tuning parameters. We experimentally achieve 84.6% and 82.5% stabilization fidelity for the odd and even-parity Bell states as two special points in the manifold. We also perform fast dissipative switching between these opposite parity states within 1.8 μs and 0.9 μs by sequentially applying different stabilization drives. Our result is a precursor for new reservoir engineering-based error correction schemes.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2024

Tunable Inductive Coupler for High-Fidelity Gates Between Fluxonium Qubits

The fluxonium qubit is a promising candidate for quantum computation due to its long coherence times and large anharmonicity. We present a tunable coupler that realizes strong inductive coupling between two heavy-fluxonium qubits, each with approximately 50-MHz frequencies and approximately 5-GHz anharmonicities. The coupler enables the qubits to have a large tuning range of 𝑋⁢𝑋 coupling strengths (−35 to 75 MHz). The 𝑍⁢𝑍 coupling strength is <3 kHz across the entire coupler bias range and <100 Hz at the coupler off position. These qualities lead to fast high-fidelity single- and two-qubit gates. By driving at the difference frequency of the two qubits, we realize a $\sqrt{i\textrm{SWAP}}$ gate in 258 ns with fidelity 99.72%, and by driving at the sum frequency of the two qubits, we achieve a $\sqrt{𝑏⁢\textrm{SWAP}}$ gate in 102 ns with fidelity 99.91%. This latter gate is only five qubit Larmor periods in length. We run cross-entropy benchmarking for over 20 consecutive hours and measure stable gate fidelities, with $\sqrt{𝑏⁢\textrm{SWAP}}$ drift (2⁢𝜎) <0.02% and $\sqrt{i\textrm{SWAP}}$ drift <0.08%.

Zhang, Helin↗
DOE OSTI2024

Stimulated Emission of Signal Photons from Dark Matter Waves

The manipulation of quantum states of light has resulted in significant advancements in both dark matter searches and gravitational wave detectors. Current dark matter searches operating in the microwave frequency range use nearly quantum-limited amplifiers. Future high frequency searches will use photon counting techniques to evade the standard quantum limit. We present a signal enhancement technique that utilizes a superconducting qubit to prepare a superconducting microwave cavity in a nonclassical Fock state and stimulate the emission of a photon from a dark matter wave. By initializing the cavity in an | n = 4 ⟩ Fock state, we demonstrate a quantum enhancement technique that increases the signal photon rate and hence also the dark matter scan rate each by a factor of 2.78. Using this technique, we conduct a dark photon search in a band around 5.965 GHz ( 24.67 μ eV ), where the kinetic mixing angle ε ≥ 4.35 × 10 − 13 is excluded at the 90% confidence level. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Improved coherence in optically defined niobium trilayer-junction qubits

Niobium offers the benefit of increased operating temperatures and frequencies for Josephson junctions, which are the core component of superconducting devices. However existing niobium processes are limited by more complicated fabrication methods and higher losses than now-standard aluminum junctions. Combining recent trilayer fabrication advancements, methods to remove lossy dielectrics and modern superconducting qubit design, we revisit niobium trilayer junctions and fabricate all-niobium transmons using only optical lithography. We characterize devices in the microwave domain, measuring coherence times up to $62~\mu$s and an average qubit quality factor above $10^5$: much closer to state-of-the-art aluminum-junction devices. We find the higher superconducting gap energy also results in reduced quasiparticle sensitivity above $0.16~$K, where aluminum junction performance deteriorates. Our junction process is readily applied to standard optical-based foundry processes, opening new avenues for direct integration and scalability, and paves the way for higher-temperature and higher-frequency quantum devices.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

Quantum Sensors for High Energy Physics

Strong motivation for investing in quantum sensing arises from the need to investigate phenomena that are very weakly coupled to the matter and fields well described by the Standard Model. These can be related to the problems of dark matter, dark sectors not necessarily related to dark matter (for example sterile neutrinos), dark energy and gravity, fundamental constants, and problems with the Standard Model itself including the Strong CP problem in QCD. Resulting experimental needs typically involve the measurement of very low energy impulses or low power periodic signals that are normally buried under large backgrounds. This report documents the findings of the 2023 Quantum Sensors for High Energy Physics workshop which identified enabling quantum information science technologies that could be utilized in future particle physics experiments, targeting high energy physics science goals.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Single electrons on solid neon as a solid-state qubit platform

Progress towards the realization of quantum computers requires persistent advances in their constituent building blocks-qubits. Novel qubit platforms that simultaneously embody long coherence, fast operation and large scalability offer compelling advantages in the construction of quantum computers and many other quantum information systems 1-3 . Electrons, ubiquitous elementary particles of non-zero charge, spin and mass, have commonly been perceived as paradigmatic local quantum information carriers. Despite superior controllability and configurability, their practical performance as qubits through either motional or spin states depends critically on their material environment 3-5 . In this work, we report our experimental realization of a qubit platform based on isolated single electrons trapped on an ultraclean solid neon surface in vacuum 6-13 . By integrating an electron trap in a circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture 14-20 , we achieve strong coupling between the motional states of a single electron and a single microwave photon in an on-chip superconducting resonator. Qubit gate operations and dispersive readout are implemented to measure the energy relaxation time T 1 of 15 μs and phase coherence time T 2 over 200 ns. These results indicate that the electron-on-solid-neon qubit already performs near the state of the art for a charge qubit 21 .

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

The QICK (Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit): Readout and control for qubits and detectors

We introduce a Xilinx RF System-on-Chip (RFSoC)-based qubit controller (called the Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit, or QICK for short), which supports the direct synthesis of control pulses with carrier frequencies of up to 6 GHz. The QICK can control multiple qubits or other quantum devices. The QICK consists of a digital board hosting an RFSoC field-programmable gate array, custom firmware, and software and an optional companion custom-designed analog front-end board. We characterize the analog performance of the system as well as its digital latency, important for quantum error correction and feedback protocols. We benchmark the controller by performing standard characterizations of a transmon qubit. We achieve an average gate fidelity of ℱ avg =99.93%. All of the schematics, firmware, and software are open-source.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2021

Seamless High-Q Microwave Cavities for Multimode Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics

Multimode cavity quantum electrodynamics ---where a two-level system interacts simultaneously with many cavity modes---provides a versatile framework for quantum information processing and quantum optics. Due to the combination of long coherence times and large interaction strengths, one of the leading experimental platforms for cavity QED involves coupling a superconducting circuit to a 3D microwave cavity. In this work, we realize a 3D multimode circuit QED system with single photon lifetimes of $2$ ms and cooperativities of $0.5-1.5\times10^9$ across 9 modes of a novel seamless cavity. We demonstrate a variety of protocols for universal single-mode quantum control applicable across all cavity modes, using only a single drive line. We achieve this by developing a straightforward flute method for creating monolithic superconducting microwave cavities that reduces loss while simultaneously allowing control of the mode spectrum and mode-qubit interaction. We highlight the flexibility and ease of implementation of this technique by using it to fabricate a variety of 3D cavity geometries, providing a template for engineering multimode quantum systems with exceptionally low dissipation. This work is an important step towards realizing hardware efficient random access quantum memories and processors, and for exploring quantum many-body physics with photons.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Engineering Dynamical Sweet Spots to Protect Qubits from 1/$f$ Noise

Protecting superconducting qubits from low-frequency noise is essential for advancing superconducting quantum computation. Based on the application of a periodic drive field, we develop a protocol for engineering dynamical sweet spots which reduce the susceptibility of a qubit to low-frequency noise. Using the framework of Floquet theory, we prove rigorously that there are manifolds of dynamical sweet spots marked by extrema in the quasi-energy differences of the driven qubit. In particular, for the example of fluxonium biased slightly away from half a flux quantum, we predict an enhancement of pure-dephasing by three orders of magnitude. Employing the Floquet eigenstates as the computational basis, we show that high-fidelity single- and two-qubit gates can be implemented while maintaining dynamical sweet-spot operation. We further confirm that qubit readout can be performed by adiabatically mapping the Floquet states back to the static qubit states, and subsequently applying standard measurement techniques. Our work provides an intuitive tool to encode quantum information in robust, time-dependent states, and may be extended to alternative architectures for quantum information processing.

Huang, Ziwen↗
DOE OSTI2021

Deterministic multi-qubit entanglement in a quantum network

High-fidelity deterministic quantum state transfer and multi-qubit entanglement are demonstrated in a quantum network comprising two superconducting quantum nodes one metre apart, with each node including three interconnected qubits. The generation of high-fidelity distributed multi-qubit entanglement is a challenging task for large-scale quantum communication and computational networks. The deterministic entanglement of two remote qubits has recently been demonstrated with both photons and phonons. However, the deterministic generation and transmission of multi-qubit entanglement has not been demonstrated, primarily owing to limited state-transfer fidelities. Here we report a quantum network comprising two superconducting quantum nodes connected by a one-metre-long superconducting coaxial cable, where each node includes three interconnected qubits. By directly connecting the cable to one qubit in each node, we transfer quantum states between the nodes with a process fidelity of 0.911 +/- 0.008. We also prepare a three-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state in one node and deterministically transfer this state to the other node, with a transferred-state fidelity of 0.656 +/- 0.014. We further use this system to deterministically generate a globally distributed two-node, six-qubit GHZ state with a state fidelity of 0.722 +/- 0.021. In this work, the GHZ state fidelities are clearly above the threshold of 1/2 for genuine multipartite entanglement, showing that this architecture can be used to coherently link together multiple superconducting quantum processors, providing a modular approach for building large-scale quantum computers.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2020

Virtualized Logical Qubits: A 2.5D Architecture for Error-Corrected Quantum Computing

Current, near-term quantum devices have shown great progress in the last several years culminating recently with a demonstration of quantum supremacy. In the medium-term, however, quantum machines will need to transition to greater reliability through error correction, likely through promising techniques like surface codes which are well suited for near-term devices with limited qubit connectivity. We discover quantum memory, particularly resonant cavities with transmon qubits arranged in a 2.5D architecture, can efficiently implement surface codes with substantial hardware savings and performance/fidelity gains. Specifically, we virtualize logical qubits by storing them in layers of qubit memories connected to each transmon. Surprisingly, distributing each logical qubit across many memories has a minimal impact on fault tolerance and results in substantially more efficient operations. Our design permits fast transversal application of CNOT operations between logical qubits sharing the same physical address (same set of cavities) which are 6x faster than standard lattice surgery CNOTs. We develop a novel embedding which saves approximately 10x in transmons with another 2x savings from an additional optimization for compactness. Although qubit virtualization pays a 10x penalty in serialization, advantages in the transversal CNOT and in area efficiency result in fault-tolerance and performance comparable to conventional 2D transmon-only architectures. Our simulations show our system can achieve fault tolerance comparable to conventional two-dimensional grids while saving substantial hardware. Furthermore, our architecture can produce magic states at 1.22x the baseline rate given a fixed number of transmon qubits. Here, this is a critical benchmark for future fault-tolerant quantum computers as magic states are essential and machines will spend the majority of their resources continuously producing them. This architecture substantially reduces the hardware requirements for fault-tolerant quantum computing and puts within reach a proof-of-concept experimental demonstration of around 10 logical qubits, requiring only 11 transmons and 9 attached cavities in total.

quantum computing↗
DOE OSTI2019

Coupling a single electron on superfluid helium to a superconducting resonator

Abstract Electrons on helium form a unique two-dimensional system on the interface of liquid helium and vacuum. A small number of trapped electrons on helium exhibits strong interactions in the absence of disorder, and can be used as a qubit. Trapped electrons typically have orbital frequencies in the microwave regime and can therefore be integrated with circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED), which studies light–matter interactions using microwave photons. Here, we experimentally realize a cQED platform with the orbitals of single electrons on helium. We deterministically trap one to four electrons in a dot integrated with a microwave resonator, allowing us to study the electrons’ response to microwaves. Furthermore, we find a single-electron-photon coupling strength of $$g/2\pi =4.8\pm 0.3$$ g ∕ 2 π = 4.8 ± 0.3 MHz, greatly exceeding the resonator linewidth $$\kappa /2\pi =0.5$$ κ ∕ 2 π = 0.5 MHz. These results pave the way towards microwave studies of Wigner molecules and coherent control of the orbital and spin state of a single electron on helium.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2019

Tunable High-Q Photonic Band Gap Cavity

We present the design of a tunable high-Q photonic band gap (PBG) cavity, made from a periodic arrangement of dielectric rods in a woodpile like structure. We know that the axion signal rate di- minishes as we move to higher axion mass searches. High quality factor achieved with this type of cavity will enable higher mass axion search with improved signal sensitivity and faster scanning rate. Quality factor in excess of the axion-Q will enable us to design interesting experiments such as the quantum non-demolition (QND) measurement of itinerant microwave photons using superconducting qubits, and stimulated emis- sion of photons.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Spin–phonon interactions in silicon carbide addressed by Gaussian acoustics [Probing spin-phonon interactions in silicon carbide with Gaussian acoustics]

Hybrid spin-mechanical systems provide a platform for integrating quantum registers and transducers. Efficient creation and control of such systems require a comprehensive understanding of the individual spin and mechanical components as well as their mutual interactions. Point defects in silicon carbide (SiC) offer long-lived, optically addressable spin registers in a wafer-scale material with low acoustic losses, making them natural candidates for integration with high quality factor mechanical resonators. Here, we show Gaussian focusing of a surface acoustic wave in SiC, characterized by a novel stroboscopic X-ray diffraction imaging technique, which delivers direct, strain amplitude information at nanoscale spatial resolution. Using ab initio calculations, we provide a more complete picture of spin-strain coupling for various defects in SiC with C 3v symmetry. This reveals the importance of shear for future device engineering and enhanced spin-mechanical coupling. We demonstrate all-optical detection of acoustic paramagnetic resonance without microwave magnetic fields, relevant to sensing applications. Lastly, we show mechanically driven Autler-Townes splittings and magnetically forbidden Rabi oscillations. These results offer a basis for full strain control of three-level spin systems.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Experimental data from a quantum computer verifies the generalized Pauli exclusion principle

“What are the consequences… that Fermi particles cannot get into the same state…” R. P. Feynman wrote of the Pauli exclusion principle, “In fact, almost all the peculiarities of the material world hinge on this wonderful fact.” In 1972 Borland and Dennis showed that there exist powerful constraints beyond the Pauli exclusion principle on the orbital occupations of Fermi particles, providing important restrictions on quantum correlation and entanglement. Here we use computations on quantum computers to experimentally verify the existence of these additional constraints. Quantum many-fermion states are randomly prepared on the quantum computer and tested for constraint violations. Measurements show no violation and confirm the generalized Pauli exclusion principle with an error of one part in one quintillion.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗