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At least 1,639 records · Page 91
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DOE OSTI2026

Ambient Aging of Epitaxial and Polycrystalline Rhenium Thin Films

Extending the lifetime of superconducting qubits requires materials that are resistant to surface oxidation. Rhenium has emerged as one such promising candidate that forms a sub-nanometer oxide. Grain boundaries are known to promote material degradation, and thus, we compare epitaxial (single crystal, no grain boundaries) and polycrystalline (many grain boundaries) rhenium thin films after three years of ambient environmental exposure. Epitaxial rhenium remained free of undesired particles, while polycrystalline rhenium developed surface oxide crystallites. Surface characterization using scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals localized oxygen and nitrogen enrichment, together with a Re⁷⁺ oxidation state in the polycrystalline surface particles, consistent with the proposed formation of ammonium perrhenate. Epitaxial rhenium demonstrated greater resistance to aging and oxidation, making it a more promising candidate for superconducting qubits. Ongoing cleaning and XPS depth profiling will further determine the identity and origin of the surface crystallites.

Wiacek, Wiktoria [Fermilab]↗
DOE OSTI2026

Ambient Aging of Epitaxial and Polycrystalline Rhenium Thin Films

Extending the lifetime of superconducting qubits requires materials that are resistant to surface oxidation. Rhenium has emerged as one such promising candidate that forms a sub-nanometer oxide. Grain boundaries are known to promote material degradation, and thus we compared epitaxial (single crystal, no grain boundaries) and polycrystalline (many grain boundaries) rhenium thin films after three years of ambient environmental exposure. Epitaxial rhenium remained free of undesired particles, while polycrystalline rhenium developed surface oxide crystallites. Surface characterization using scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals localized oxygen and nitrogen enrichment together with a Re⁷⁺ oxidation state in the polycrystalline surface particles, consistent with the proposed formation of ammonium perrhenate. Epitaxial rhenium demonstrated greater resistance to aging and oxidation, making it a more promising candidate for superconducting qubits. Ongoing cleaning and XPS depth profiling will further determine the identity and origin of the surface crystallites.

Wiacek, Wiktoria [William Rainey Harper Coll.]↗
DOE OSTI2021

Quantum Computer-Aided Design: Digital Quantum Simulation of Quantum Processors

With the increasing size of quantum processors, submodules that constitute the processor hardware will become too large to accurately simulate on a classical computer. Therefore, one would soon have to fabricate and test each new design primitive and parameter choice in time-consuming coordination between design, fabrication, and experimental validation. Here we show how one can design and test the performance of next-generation quantum hardware—by using existing quantum computers. Focusing on superconducting transmon processors as a prominent hardware platform, we compute the static and dynamic properties of individual and coupled transmons. We show how the energy spectra of transmons can be obtained by variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithms that are well suited for near-term noisy quantum computers. In addition, single- and two-qubit gate simulations are demonstrated via Suzuki-Trotter decomposition. Our methods pave a promising way towards designing candidate quantum processors when the demands of calculating submodule properties exceed the capabilities of classical computing resources.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2020

Inferring the Dynamics of the State Evolution During Quantum Annealing

To solve an optimization problem using a commercial quantum annealer, one has to represent the problem of interest as an Ising or a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem and submit its coefficients to the annealer, which then returns a user-specified number of low-energy solutions. It would be useful to know what happens in the quantum processor during the anneal process so that one could design better algorithms or suggest improvements to the hardware. However, existing quantum annealers are not able to directly extract such information from the processor. Hence, in this work we propose to use advanced features of D-Wave 2000Q to indirectly infer information about the dynamics of the state evolution during the anneal process. Specifically, D-Wave 2000Q allows the user to customize the anneal schedule, that is, the schedule with which the anneal fraction is changed from the start to the end of the anneal. Furthermore, using this feature, we design a set of modified anneal schedules whose outputs can be used to generate information about the states of the system at user-defined time points during a standard anneal. With this process, called "slicing", we obtain approximate distributions of lowest-energy anneal solutions as the anneal time evolves. We use our technique to obtain a variety of insights into the annealer, such as the state evolution during annealing, when individual bits in an evolving solution flip during the anneal process and when they stabilize, and we introduce a technique to estimate the freeze-out point of both the system as well as of individual qubits.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Superconductor/Ferromagnet Heterostructures: A Platform for Superconducting Spintronics and Quantum Computation

The interplay between superconductivity and ferromagnetism in the superconductor/ferromagnet (SC/FM) heterostructures generates many interesting physical phenomena, including spin-triplet superconductivity, superconducting order parameter oscillation, and topological superconductivity. The unique physical properties make the SC/FM heterostructure as promising platforms for future superconducting spintronics and quantum computation applications. In this article, important research progress of SC/FM heterostructures from superconducting spintronics to quantum computation is reviewed, and it is organized as follows. First, the progress of spin current carriers in SC/FM heterostructures including Bogoliubov quasiparticles, superconducting vortex, and spin-triplet Cooper pairs which might be used for long-range spin transport is discussed. Then, the π Josephson junctions and their application for constructing π qubits are described. Finally, experimental signatures of Majorana states in the SC/FM heterostructures and the theoretically proposed manipulation are briefly reviewed, which could be useful to realize fault-tolerant topological quantum computing.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2018

Multilevel Effects in a Driven Generalized Rabi Model

We study numerically the onset of higher-level excitations and resonance frequency shifts in the generalized multilevel Rabi model with dispersive coupling under strong driving. The response to a weak probe is calculated using the Floquet method, which allows us to calculate the probe spectrum and extract the resonance frequency. We test our predictions using a superconducting circuit consisting of a transmon coupled capacitively to a coplanar waveguide resonator. This system is monitored by a weak probe field and at the same time driven at various powers by a stronger microwave tone. We show that the transition from the quantum to the classical regime is accompanied by a rapid increase of the transmon occupation and consequently that the qubit approximation is valid only in the extreme quantum limit.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2018

Confocal Annular Josephson Tunnel Junctions with Large Eccentricity

Confocal annular Josephson tunnel junctions (CAJTJs), which are the natural generalization of the circular annular Josephson tunnel junctions, have a rich nonlinear phenomenology due to the intrinsic non-uniformity of their planar tunnel barrier delimited by two closely spaced confocal ellipses. In the presence of a uniform magnetic field in the barrier plane, the periodically changing width of the elliptical annulus generates a asymmetric double-well for a Josephson vortex trapped in a long and narrow CAJTJ. The preparation and readout of the vortex pinned in one of the two potential minima, which are important for the possible realization of a vortex qubit, have been numerically and experimentally investigated for CAJTJs with the moderate aspect ratio 2:1. In this work, we focus on the impact of the annulus eccentricity on the properties of the vortex potential profile and study the depinning mechanism of a fluxon in more eccentric samples with aspect ratio 4:1. We also discuss the effects of the temperature-dependent losses as well as the influence of the current and magnetic noise.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

Optical quantum bit string comparator

Quantum computation has attracted much attention and several quantum algorithms have been proposed in the literature. However, the hardware able to implement such algorithms is still a challenge. In this work, we provide an optical setup for implementation of a quantum bit string comparator, QBSC, for polarization-based qubit, using the non-linear Kerr effect. The QBSC is an important structure for implementation of conditional statements in quantum algorithms.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2019

Influence of the electromagnetic field on the transition of a two-level system in a Gaussian confinement potential with LO phonon and of thickness effects

In this paper, the asymmetric Gaussian confinement potential and the parabolic confinement potential (PCP) are selected to describe the along growth direction and perpendicular to growth direction confinement potential (PC) of electron in a disk quantum dot, respectively. The phonons mean number and the energies of the ground and first excited states of the electron in a quantum dot with the polarization and the thickness effect are investigated by using Lee–Low–Pines unitary transformation and the Pekar-type variational method, and on the basis of the Fermi Golden Rule, the transition of the electron caused by the electromagnetic field is discussed. Our numerical results have displayed that the electric field and the magnetic field are an indispensable condition for the induced polaron transition. The weak electric field has a strong regulatory function on the transition. The influence of the well width L and the well depth V{sub 0} of the AGFCP on the mean number of phonons, energies and transition are important and interesting; it is also found in this work that the AGFCP is better than PCP in explaining the quantum size effect of QDs and modulating electron transition properties, respectively. This quantum system can be employed as a two-level quantum qubit.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Controllable quantum information network with a superconducting system

We propose a controllable and scalable architecture for quantum information processing using a superconducting system network, which is composed of current-biased Josephson junctions (CBJJs) as tunable couplers between the two superconducting transmission line resonators (TLRs), each coupling to multiple superconducting qubits (SQs). We explicitly demonstrate that the entangled state, the phase gate, and the information transfer between any two selected SQs can be implemented, respectively. Lastly, numerical simulation shows that our scheme is robust against the decoherence of the system. -- Highlights: •An architecture for quantum information processing is proposed. •The quantum information transfer between any two selected SQs is implemented. •This proposal is robust against the decoherence of the system. •This architecture can be fabricated on a chip down to the micrometer scale.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Enhancing teleportation fidelity by means of weak measurements or reversal

The enhancement of teleportation fidelity by weak measurement or quantum measurement reversal is investigated. One qubit of a maximally entangled state undergoes the amplitude damping, and the subsequent application of weak measurement or quantum measurement reversal could improve the teleportation fidelity beyond the classical region. The improvement could not be attributed to the increasing of entanglement, quantum discord, classical correlation or total correlation. We declare that it should be owed to the probabilistic nature of the method. - Highlights: • The method’s probabilistic nature should be responsible for the improvement. • Quantum or classical correlation cannot explain the improvement. • The receiver cannot apply weak measurements. • The sender’s quantum measurement reversal is only useful for |Ψ{sup ±}〉.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Recovering entanglement by local operations

We investigate the phenomenon of bipartite entanglement revivals under purely local operations in systems subject to local and independent classical noise sources. We explain this apparent paradox in the physical ensemble description of the system state by introducing the concept of “hidden” entanglement, which indicates the amount of entanglement that cannot be exploited due to the lack of classical information on the system. For this reason this part of entanglement can be recovered without the action of non-local operations or back-transfer process. For two noninteracting qubits under a low-frequency stochastic noise, we show that entanglement can be recovered by local pulses only. We also discuss how hidden entanglement may provide new insights about entanglement revivals in non-Markovian dynamics.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Sudden transition and sudden change from open spin environments

We investigate the necessary conditions for the existence of sudden transition or sudden change phenomenon for appropriate initial states under dephasing. As illustrative examples, we study the behaviors of quantum correlation dynamics of two noninteracting qubits in independent and common open spin environments, respectively. For the independent environments case, we find that the quantum correlation dynamics is closely related to the Loschmidt echo and the dynamics exhibits a sudden transition from classical to quantum correlation decay. It is also shown that the sudden change phenomenon may occur for the common environment case and stationary quantum discord is found at the high temperature region of the environment. Finally, we investigate the quantum criticality of the open spin environment by exploring the probability distribution of the Loschmidt echo and the scaling transformation behavior of quantum discord, respectively. - Highlights: • Sudden transition or sudden change from open spin baths are studied. • Quantum discord is related to the Loschmidt echo in independent open spin baths. • Steady quantum discord is found in a common open spin bath. • The probability distribution of the Loschmidt echo is analyzed. • The scaling transformation behavior of quantum discord is displayed.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Non Abelian structures and the geometric phase of entangled qudits

In this work, we address some important topological and algebraic aspects of two-qudit states evolving under local unitary operations. The projective invariant subspaces and evolutions are connected with the common elements characterizing the su(d) Lie algebra and their representations. In particular, the roots and weights turn out to be natural quantities to parametrize cyclic evolutions and fractional phases. This framework is then used to recast the coset contribution to the geometric phase in a form that generalizes the usual monopole-like formula for a single qubit.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Two-dimensional lattice gauge theories with superconducting quantum circuits

A quantum simulator of U(1) lattice gauge theories can be implemented with superconducting circuits. This allows the investigation of confined and deconfined phases in quantum link models, and of valence bond solid and spin liquid phases in quantum dimer models. Fractionalized confining strings and the real-time dynamics of quantum phase transitions are accessible as well. Here we show how state-of-the-art superconducting technology allows us to simulate these phenomena in relatively small circuit lattices. By exploiting the strong non-linear couplings between quantized excitations emerging when superconducting qubits are coupled, we show how to engineer gauge invariant Hamiltonians, including ring-exchange and four-body Ising interactions. We demonstrate that, despite decoherence and disorder effects, minimal circuit instances allow us to investigate properties such as the dynamics of electric flux strings, signaling confinement in gauge invariant field theories. The experimental realization of these models in larger superconducting circuits could address open questions beyond current computational capability.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Entanglement and quantum teleportation via decohered tripartite entangled states

The entanglement behavior of two classes of multi-qubit system, GHZ and GHZ like states passing through a generalized amplitude damping channel is discussed. Despite this channel causes degradation of the entangled properties and consequently their abilities to perform quantum teleportation, one can always improve the lower values of the entanglement and the fidelity of the teleported state by controlling on Bell measurements, analyzer angle and channel’s strength. Using GHZ-like state within a generalized amplitude damping channel is much better than using the normal GHZ-state, where the decay rate of entanglement and the fidelity of the teleported states are smaller than those depicted for GHZ state.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

On the Schmidt-rank-three bipartite and multipartite unitary operator

Unitary operations are physically implementable. We further the understanding of such operators by studying the possible forms of nonlocal unitary operators, which are bipartite or multipartite unitary operators that are not tensor product operators. They are of broad relevance in quantum information processing. We prove that any nonlocal unitary operator of Schmidt rank three on a d{sub A}×d{sub B} bipartite system is locally equivalent to a controlled unitary. This operator can be locally implemented assisted by a maximally entangled state of Schmidt rank min(d{sub A}{sup 2},d{sub B}) when d{sub A}≤d{sub B}. We further show that any multipartite unitary operator U of Schmidt rank three can be controlled by one system or collectively controlled by two systems, regardless of the number of systems of U. In the scenario of n-qubit, we construct non-controlled U for any odd n≥5, and prove that U is a controlled unitary for any even n≥4.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2015

Sudden change of geometric quantum discord in finite temperature reservoirs

We investigate sudden change (SC) behaviors of the distance-based measures of geometric quantum discords (GQDs) for two non-interacting qubits subject to the two-sided and the one-sided thermal reservoirs. We found that the GQDs defined by different distances exhibit different SCs, and thus the SCs are the combined result of the chosen discord measure and the property of a state. We also found that the thermal reservoir may generate states having different orderings related to different GQDs. These inherent differences of the GQDs reveal that they are incompatible in characterizing quantum correlations both quantitatively and qualitatively. - Highlights: • Comparable study of different distance-based geometric quantum discords. • Evolution of the geometric quantum discords in finite temperature reservoirs. • Different geometric quantum discords exhibit distinct sudden changes. • Nonunique states ordering imposed by different geometric quantum discords.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗