Florian R. Ong

Single-shot qubit readout in circuit quantum electrodynamics

The ‘transmon’ design for superconducting qubits is particularly promising, owing to the long coherence times that it enables. Now, high-fidelity single-shot readout of such qubits — necessary for operating a quantum processor — has been demonstrated The future development of quantum information using superconducting circuits requires Josephson qubits1 with long coherence times combined with a high-fidelity readout. Significant progress in the control of coherence has recently been achieved using circuit quantum electrodynamics architectures2,3, where the qubit is embedded in a coplanar waveguide resonator, which both provides a well-controlled electromagnetic environment and serves as qubit readout. In particular, a new qubit design, the so-called transmon, yields reproducibly long coherence times4,5. However, a high-fidelity single-shot readout of the transmon, desirable for running simple quantum algorithms or measuring quantum correlations in multi-qubit experiments, is still lacking. Here, we demonstrate a new transmon circuit where the waveguide resonator is turned into a sample-and-hold detector—more specifically, a Josephson bifurcation amplifier6,7—which allows both fast measurement and single-shot discrimination of the qubit states. We report Rabi oscillations with a high visibility of 94%, together with dephasing and relaxation times longer than 0.5 μs. By carrying out two measurements in series, we also demonstrate that this new readout does not induce extra qubit relaxation.

Attojoule Calorimetry of Mesoscopic Superconducting Loops

We report the first experimental evidence of nontrivial thermal behavior of the simplest mesoscopic system--a superconducting loop. By measuring the specific heat C of an array of 450,000 noninteracting aluminum loops with very high accuracy of approximately 20 fJ/K, we show that the loops go through a periodic sequence of phase transitions (with a period of an integer number of magnetic flux quanta) as the magnetic flux threading each loop is increased. The transitions are well described by the Ginzburg-Landau theory and are accompanied by discontinuities of C of only several thousands of Boltzmann constants kB.

Circuit QED with a nonlinear resonator: ac-stark shift and dephasing

We have performed spectroscopic measurements of a superconducting qubit dispersively coupled to a nonlinear resonator driven by a pump microwave field. Measurements of the qubit frequency shift provide a sensitive probe of the intracavity field, yielding a precise characterization of the resonator nonlinearity. The qubit linewidth has a complex dependence on the pump frequency and amplitude, which is correlated with the gain of the nonlinear resonator operated as a small-signal amplifier. The corresponding dephasing rate is found to be close to the quantum limit in the low-gain limit of the amplifier.

Characterization of a Two-Transmon Processor with Individual Single-Shot Qubit Readout

We report the characterization of a two-qubit processor implemented with two capacitively coupled tunable superconducting qubits of the transmon type, each qubit having its own nondestructive single-shot readout. The fixed capacitive coupling yields the sqrt[iSWAP] two-qubit gate for a suitable interaction time. We reconstruct by state tomography the coherent dynamics of the two-bit register as a function of the interaction time, observe a violation of the Bell inequality by 22 standard deviations after correcting readout errors, and measure by quantum process tomography a gate fidelity of 90%.

Flux qubits in a planar circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture: Quantum control and decoherence

We report experiments on superconducting flux qubits in a circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) setup. Two qubits, independently biased and controlled, are coupled to a coplanar waveguide resonator. Dispersive qubit state readout reaches a maximum contrast of 72%. We measure energy relaxation times at the symmetry point of 5 and

Quantum heating of a nonlinear resonator probed by a superconducting qubit.

10\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}

Back-action of a driven nonlinear resonator on a superconducting qubit

, corresponding to 7 and

Thermal signatures of the Little-Parks effect in the heat capacity of mesoscopic superconducting rings

20\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}

Superconducting qubit as a probe of squeezing in a nonlinear resonator

when relaxation through the resonator due to Purcell effect is subtracted out, and levels of flux noise of 2.6 and

Fine frequency shift of single vortex entrance and exit in superconducting loops

2.7\phantom{\rule{0.222222em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}}_{0}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}