David M. Berns

Microwave-Induced Cooling of a Superconducting Qubit

We demonstrated microwave-induced cooling in a superconducting flux qubit. The thermal population in the first-excited state of the qubit is driven to a higher-excited state by way of a sideband transition. Subsequent relaxation into the ground state results in cooling. Effective temperatures as low as ≈3 millikelvin are achieved for bath temperatures of 30 to 400 millikelvin, a cooling factor between 10 and 100. This demonstration provides an analog to optical cooling of trapped ions and atoms and is generalizable to other solid-state quantum systems. Active cooling of qubits, applied to quantum information science, provides a means for qubit-state preparation with improved fidelity and for suppressing decoherence in multi-qubit systems.

Coherent quasiclassical dynamics of a persistent current qubit.

A new regime of coherent quantum dynamics of a qubit is realized at low driving frequencies in the strong driving limit. Coherent transitions between qubit states occur via the Landau-Zener process when the system is swept through an energy-level avoided crossing. The quantum interference mediated by repeated transitions gives rise to an oscillatory dependence of the qubit population on the driving-field amplitude and flux detuning. These interference fringes, which at high frequencies consist of individual multiphoton resonances, persist even for driving frequencies smaller than the decoherence rate, where individual resonances are no longer distinguishable. A theoretical model that incorporates dephasing agrees well with the observations.

Amplitude spectroscopy of a solid-state artificial atom

The energy-level structure of a quantum system, which has a fundamental role in its behaviour, can be observed as discrete lines and features in absorption and emission spectra. Conventionally, spectra are measured using frequency spectroscopy, whereby the frequency of a harmonic electromagnetic driving field is tuned into resonance with a particular separation between energy levels. Although this technique has been successfully employed in a variety of physical systems, including natural and artificial atoms and molecules, its application is not universally straightforward and becomes extremely challenging for frequencies in the range of tens to hundreds of gigahertz. Here we introduce a complementary approach, amplitude spectroscopy, whereby a harmonic driving field sweeps an artificial atom through the avoided crossings between energy levels at a fixed frequency. Spectroscopic information is obtained from the amplitude dependence of the system’s response, thereby overcoming many of the limitations of a broadband-frequency-based approach. The resulting ‘spectroscopy diamonds’, the regions in parameter space where transitions between specific pairs of levels can occur, exhibit interference patterns and population inversion that serve to distinguish the atom’s spectrum. Amplitude spectroscopy provides a means of manipulating and characterizing systems over an extremely broad bandwidth, using only a single driving frequency that may be orders of magnitude smaller than the energy scales being probed.

Quantum Phase Tomography of a Strongly Driven Qubit

The interference between repeated Landau-Zener transitions in a qubit swept through an avoided level crossing results in Stückelberg oscillations in qubit magnetization, a hallmark of the coherent strongly driven regime in two-level systems. The two-dimensional Fourier transforms of the resulting oscillatory patterns are found to exhibit a family of one-dimensional curves in Fourier space, in agreement with recent observations in a superconducting qubit. We interpret these images in terms of time evolution of the quantum phase of the qubit state and show that they can be used to probe dephasing mechanisms.

Pulse imaging and nonadiabatic control of solid-state artificial atoms

Transitions in an artificial atom, driven nonadiabatically through an energy-level avoided crossing, can be controlled by carefully engineering the driving protocol. We have driven a superconducting persistent-current qubit with a large-amplitude radio-frequency field. By applying a biharmonic wave form generated by a digital source, we demonstrate a mapping between the amplitude and phase of the harmonics produced at the source and those received by the device. This allows us to image the actual wave form at the device. This information is used to engineer a desired time dependence, as confirmed by the detailed comparison with a simulation.

Implementation Schemes for the Factorized Quantum Lattice-Gas Algorithm for the One Dimensional Diffusion Equation using Persistent-Current Qubits

We present two experimental schemes that can be used to implement the Factorized Quantum Lattice-Gas Algorithm for the 1D Diffusion Equation with Persistent-Current (PC) Qubits. One scheme involves biasing the PC Qubit at multiple flux bias points throughout the course of the algorithm. An implementation analogous to that done in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Quantum Computing is also developed. Errors due to a few key approximations utilized are discussed and differences between the PC Qubit and NMR systems are highlighted