William D. Oliver

Mach-Zehnder Interferometry in a Strongly Driven Superconducting Qubit

We demonstrate Mach-Zehnder–type interferometry in a superconducting flux qubit. The qubit is a tunable artificial atom, the ground and excited states of which exhibit an avoided crossing. Strongly driving the qubit with harmonic excitation sweeps it through the avoided crossing two times per period. Because the induced Landau-Zener transitions act as coherent beamsplitters, the accumulated phase between transitions, which varies with microwave amplitude, results in quantum interference fringes for n = 1 to 20 photon transitions. The generalization of optical Mach-Zehnder interferometry, performed in qubit phase space, provides an alternative means to manipulate and characterize the qubit in the strongly driven regime.

Flux-driven Josephson parametric amplifier

We have developed a Josephson parametric amplifier, comprising a superconducting coplanar waveguide resonator terminated by a dc SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device). An external field (the pump,

A near–quantum-limited Josephson traveling-wave parametric amplifier

\sim 20

High-efficiency photon-number detection for quantum information processing

GHz) modulates the flux threading the dc SQUID, and, thereby, the resonant frequency of the cavity field (the signal,

Microwave-Induced Cooling of a Superconducting Qubit

\sim 10

Study of loss in superconducting coplanar waveguide resonators

GHz), which leads to parametric signal amplification. We operated the amplifier at different band centers, and observed amplification (17 dB at maximum) and deamplification depending on the relative phase between the pump and the signal. The noise temperature is estimated to be less than 0.87 K.

The flux qubit revisited to enhance coherence and reproducibility.

Stringing together a powerful amplifier Amplifying microwave signals with high gain and across a broad range of frequencies is crucial in solid-state quantum information processing (QIP). Achieving broadband operation is especially tricky. Macklin et al. engineered an amplifier that contains a long chain of so-called Josephson junctions (see the Perspective by Cleland). The amplifier exhibited high gain over a gigahertz-sized bandwidth and was able to perform high-fidelity qubit readout. Because the amplifier will be capable of reading out as many as 20 qubits simultaneously, it may help to scale up QIP protocols. Science, this issue p. 307; see also p. 280 A microwave amplifier containing a chain of Josephson junctions shows promising performance. [Also see Perspective by Cleland] Detecting single–photon level signals—carriers of both classical and quantum information—is particularly challenging for low-energy microwave frequency excitations. Here we introduce a superconducting amplifier based on a Josephson junction transmission line. Unlike current standing-wave parametric amplifiers, this traveling wave architecture robustly achieves high gain over a bandwidth of several gigahertz with sufficient dynamic range to read out 20 superconducting qubits. To achieve this performance, we introduce a subwavelength resonant phase-matching technique that enables the creation of nonlinear microwave devices with unique dispersion relations. We benchmark the amplifier with weak measurements, obtaining a high quantum efficiency of 75% (70% including noise added by amplifiers following the Josephson amplifier). With a flexible design based on compact lumped elements, this Josephson amplifier has broad applicability to microwave metrology and quantum optics.

Electron entanglement via a quantum dot.

The visible light photon counter (VLPC) features high quantum efficiency (QE) and low pulse height dispersion. These properties make it ideal for efficient photon-number state detection. The ability to perform efficient photon-number state detection is important in many quantum information processing applications, including recent proposals for performing quantum computation with linear optical elements. In this paper, we investigate the unique capabilities of the VLPC. The efficiency of the detector and cryogenic system is measured at 543 nm wavelengths to be 85%. A picosecond pulsed laser is then used to excite the detector with pulses having average photon numbers ranging from 3-5. The output of the VLPC is used to discriminate photon numbers in a pulse. The error probability for number state discrimination is an increasing function of the number of photons, due to buildup of multiplication noise. This puts an ultimate limit on the ability of the VLPC to do number state detection. For many applications, it is sufficient to discriminate between 1 and more than one detected photon. The VLPC can do this with 99% accuracy.

Fabrication Process and Properties of Fully-Planarized Deep-Submicron Nb/Al–

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.

\hbox{AlO}_{\rm x}\hbox{/Nb}

Superconducting coplanar waveguide (SCPW) resonators have a wide range of applications due to the combination of their planar geometry and high quality factors relative to normal metals. However, their performance is sensitive to both the details of their geometry and the materials and processes that are used in their fabrication. In this paper, we study the dependence of SCPW resonator performance on materials and geometry as a function of temperature and excitation power. We measure quality factors greater than