The invention is generally related to the field of quantum computing. In particular, the invention is related to a tunable resonator-resonator coupling circuit, as well as to a quantum computing apparatus using one or more such circuits.
A quantum computing device, also referred to as a quantum computer, uses quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform required quantum computing operations. Unlike a conventional computer that manipulates information in the form of bits (e.g., “1” or “0”), the quantum computer manipulates information using qubits. A qubit may refer not only to a basic unit of quantum information but also to a quantum device that is used to store one or more qubits of information (e.g., the superposition of “0” and “1”).
The quantum computer may be implemented based on superconducting circuits comprising superconducting qubits and/or resonators. Tunable interaction between the superconducting qubits or resonators is desirable for most of the quantum computing operations (e.g., large-scale quantum computation and simulation). It may be achieved by inserting an extra circuit element between the superconducting qubits or resonators, namely a tunable coupler which allows states of the superconducting qubits or resonators to interact with each other in a controlled manner. In other words, the tunable coupler arranged between the superconducting qubits or resonators allows one to implement a quantum gate.
A variety of tunable couplers have previously been designed and demonstrated experimentally. For example, according to one existing tunable-coupler setup, two superconducting qubits are capacitively coupled both directly and indirectly. The indirect interaction is mediated by the tunable coupler itself. If the tunable coupler is implemented as a single-island transmon, the sign of the indirect interaction is different than that of the direct interaction at coupler frequencies that are higher than qubit frequencies. Consequently, the direct and indirect coupling terms may cancel each other at a certain coupler frequency (also referred to as an idling frequency). However, in this tunable-coupler setup, the idling frequency is always above the qubit frequencies, which may adversely affect the operation speed and accuracy of two-qubit gates implemented based on such a tunable coupler.
This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the detailed description. This summary is not intended to identify key features of the invention, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the invention.
The objective of the invention is to provide a technical solution that enables a tunable coupling between linear or nonlinear resonators.
The objective above is achieved by the features of the independent claims in the appended claims. Further embodiments and examples are apparent from the dependent claims, the detailed description and the accompanying drawings.
According to a first aspect, a tunable resonator-resonator coupling circuit is provided. The circuit comprises a first resonator and a second resonator. The first resonator is linear or nonlinear, and the second resonator is linear or nonlinear. The first resonator and the second resonator have a direct coupling therebetween. The circuit further comprises a tunable coupling element arranged to provide an indirect coupling between the first resonator and the second resonator. The tunable coupling element comprises a first superconducting island and a second superconducting island which are both ungrounded. The indirect coupling comprises: (i) a first coupling between the first resonator and the first superconducting island, (ii) a Josephson coupling between the first superconducting island and the second superconducting island, and (iii) a second coupling between the second resonator and the second superconducting island. Since the superconducting islands are floating, i.e. ungrounded, it is possible to provide different signs of coupling frequencies for the resonators and the superconducting islands, which in turn allows the interaction between the first and second resonators to be controlled more efficiently. Moreover, the design, calibration, and operation of the circuit according to the first aspect are significantly easier and simpler compared to the existing analogues, while providing the same or even better performance.
In one embodiment of the first aspect, each of the first resonator and the second resonator is linear and implemented as one of a harmonic oscillator, a coplanar waveguide resonator and a lumped element resonator. These linear resonators may be used as quantum busses, or they may be used to store qubit states. In this embodiment, the tunable coupler may allow on-demand transfer of quantum information between the linear resonators.
In another embodiment of the first aspect, each of the first resonator and the second resonator is implemented as a superconducting qubit. This may allow one to implement a two-qubit gate based on the circuit according to the first aspect.
In one embodiment of the first aspect, the direct coupling is implemented as a non-galvanic (e.g., capacitive or inductive) coupling between the first resonator and the second resonator. Such a capacitive coupling may increase the circuit performance.
In one embodiment of the first aspect, the first coupling is implemented as a capacitive coupling between the first resonator and the first superconducting island, and the second coupling is implemented as a capacitive coupling between the second resonator and the second superconducting island. Such capacitive couplings are easier to implement by using conventional technologies compared, for example, to inductive couplings.
In one embodiment of the first aspect, the tunable coupling element is implemented as a transmon qubit. The transmon qubit is less sensitive to a control noise and a signal noise compared to other standard qubit implementations.
In one embodiment of the first aspect, the first resonator has a first frequency and the second resonator has a second frequency. In this embodiment, the tunable coupling element has an idling frequency that is below each of the first frequency and the second frequency. Since the idling frequency of the whole coupling element is below the frequencies of the resonators, it is possible to design the coupling element such that its sweet spot is located at (or close to) the operation point of a two-qubit gate implemented by using superconducting qubits as the nonlinear resonators in the circuit according to the first aspect. This may reduce gate errors arising from the decoherence of the coupling element.
In one embodiment of the first aspect, the circuit further comprises a first readout resonator and a second readout resonator. The first readout resonator is configured to readout the first resonator and has a first operating frequency. The second readout resonator is configured to readout the second resonator and has a second operating frequency. Each of the first operating frequency and the second operating frequency is above each of the idling frequency of the tunable coupling element, the first frequency of the first resonator, and the second frequency of the second resonator. In this case, the coupling element will not be resonant with the readout resonators during the circuit operation (or gate operation if the resonators are represented by superconducting qubits), which would otherwise adversely affect the whole circuit operation.
In one embodiment of the first aspect, the indirect coupling further comprises a third coupling between the second resonator and the first superconducting island and a fourth coupling between the first resonator and the second superconducting island. By using these additional couplings, it is possible to increase the applicability and flexibility of the circuit according to the first aspect.
In one embodiment of the first aspect, the third coupling is implemented as a capacitive coupling between the second resonator and the first superconducting island, and the fourth coupling is implemented as a capacitive coupling between the first resonator and the second superconducting island. By using such capacitive couplings, it is possible to make the circuit according to the first aspect more compact.
In one embodiment of the first aspect, at least one of the first superconducting island and the second superconducting island has a capacitive coupling to a ground. This may allow the tunable coupling element to be shielded from other circuit elements, thereby reducing crosstalk.
According to a second aspect, a quantum computing apparatus is provided. The apparatus comprises at least one circuit according to the first aspect and a control unit configured to perform quantum computing operations by using the at least one circuit. By using such one or more tunable resonator-resonator coupling circuits in the quantum computing apparatus, one may increase the computational accuracy and processing speed of the quantum computing apparatus.
Other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent upon reading the following detailed description and reviewing the accompanying drawings.
The invention is explained below with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:
Various embodiments of the invention are further described in more detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. However, the invention may be embodied in many other forms and should not be construed as limited to any certain structure or function discussed in the following description. In contrast, these embodiments are provided to make the description of the invention detailed and complete.
According to the detailed description, it will be apparent to the ones skilled in the art that the scope of the invention encompasses any embodiment thereof, which is disclosed herein, irrespective of whether this embodiment is implemented independently or in concert with any other embodiment of the invention. For example, the circuits and apparatus disclosed herein may be implemented in practice by using any numbers of the embodiments provided herein. Furthermore, it should be understood that any embodiment of the invention may be implemented using one or more of the elements presented in the appended claims.
The word “exemplary” is used herein in the meaning of “used as an illustration”. Unless otherwise stated, any embodiment described herein as “exemplary” should not be construed as preferable or having an advantage over other embodiments.
Any positioning terminology, such as “left”, “right”, “upper”, “lower”, etc., may be used herein for convenience to describe one element's or feature's relationship to one or more other elements or features in accordance with the figures. It should be apparent that the positioning terminology is intended to encompass different orientations of the circuit disclosed herein, in addition to the orientation(s) depicted in the figures. As an example, if one imaginatively rotates the circuit in the figures 90 degrees clockwise, elements or features described as “left” and “right” relative to other elements or features would then be oriented, respectively, “above” and “below” the other elements or features. Therefore, the positioning terminology used herein should not be construed as any limitation of the invention.
Although the numerative terminology, such as “first”, “second”, etc., may be used herein to describe various embodiments and the features thereof, it should be understood that the embodiments and the features thereof should not be limited by this numerative terminology. This numerative terminology is used herein only to distinguish one embodiment or feature from another embodiment or feature. Thus, a first embodiment discussed below could be called a second embodiment and vice versa, without departing from the teachings of the invention.
As used in the embodiments disclosed herein, a tunable resonator-resonator coupling circuit may refer to a quantum circuit in which linear or nonlinear resonators are coupled to each other in a controlled manner. One non-restrictive example of the linear resonators may include a harmonic oscillator which is well-known in the art (for this reason, its description is omitted herein). One non-restrictive example of the nonlinear resonators may include a superconducting qubit.
As used in the embodiments disclosed herein, the superconducting qubit may refer to a superconducting quantum device configured to store one or more quantum bits of information (or qubits for short). In this sense, the superconducting qubit serves as a quantum information storage and processing device. The source of nonlinearity in the superconducting qubit may be represented by one or more Josephson junctions. The term “Josephson junction” is used herein in its ordinary meaning and may refer to a quantum mechanical device made of two superconducting electrodes which are separated by a barrier (e.g., a thin insulating tunnel barrier, normal metal, semiconductor, ferromagnet, etc.).
According to the embodiments disclosed herein, a quantum computing apparatus, also referred to as a quantum computer, may refer to an apparatus that is configured to perform different quantum computing operations (e.g., qubit operations, such as reading the state of a superconducting qubit, initializing the state of the superconducting qubit, and entangling the state of the superconducting qubit with the states of other superconducting qubits in the quantum computing apparatus, etc.) by using the tunable resonator-resonator coupling circuit disclosed herein. Existing implementation examples of such quantum computing apparatuses may include superconducting quantum computers, trapped ion quantum computers, quantum computers based on spins in semiconductors, quantum computers based on cavity quantum electrodynamics, optical photon quantum computers, quantum computers based on defect centers in diamond, etc.
It should be noted that there are many tunable qubit-qubit coupling circuits (also referred to as tunable couplers) in the prior art. They are mainly used to implement quantum gates and allow the states of the qubits to interact with each other in a controlled manner. Some of the existing tunable qubit-qubit coupling circuits are discussed below with reference to
The Josephson junctions used in the circuit 100 provide the anharmonicity of the first and second superconducting qubits 102, 104 and the tunable coupling element 106. However, if the first and second superconducting qubits 102, 104 and the tunable coupling element 106 all have a negative anharmonicity (which is usually observed in case of such a transmon regime), this may lead to the following problems:
The exemplary embodiments disclosed herein provide a technical solution that allows mitigating or even eliminating the above-sounded drawbacks of the prior art. In particular, the technical solution disclosed herein involves providing both direct and indirect couplings between linear or nonlinear resonators in a quantum circuit. The indirect coupling is provided by using a tunable coupling element that comprises two ungrounded superconducting islands. Since the superconducting islands are ungrounded, it is possible to provide different signs of coupling frequencies for the resonators and the superconducting islands, which in turn allows the interaction between the first and second resonators to be controlled more efficiently. Moreover, the design, calibration, and operation of the quantum circuit with such a tunable coupling element are easier compared to the existing analogues, while providing the same or even better performance.
Referring back to
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Furthermore, the tunable coupling element 406 may be configured such that its idling frequency is below qubit frequencies of the first and second superconducting qubits 402 and 404. In this case, the tunable coupling element 406 may have a sweet spot located at (or close to) the operation point of a two-qubit gate (which is implemented based on the circuit 400). This may reduce gate errors arising from the decoherence of the coupling element 406.
In one embodiment, the tunable coupling element 406 may be implemented as a transmon qubit. By using the transmon qubit as a “mediator” between the first and second superconducting qubits 402 and 404, it is possible to reduce sensitivity to a charge noise.
In one embodiment, the circuit 400 may further comprise a first readout resonator and a second readout resonator (which are not shown in the figures). The first readout resonator is configured to readout the first resonator and has a first operating frequency. The second readout resonator is configured to readout the second resonator and has a second operating frequency. Each of the first operating frequency and the second operating frequency may be set a value higher than the value of the operating frequency of the tunable coupling element 406. In this case, during the operation of the circuit 400, there is no resonance between the tunable coupling element 406 and the readout resonators, which would otherwise adversely affect the operation of the circuit 400.
The control unit 704 may refer a central processing unit (CPU), general-purpose processor, single-purpose processor, microcontroller, microprocessor, application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), field programmable gate array (FPGA), digital signal processor (DSP), complex programmable logic device, etc. It should be also noted that the control unit 704 may be implemented as any combination of one or more of the aforesaid. As an example, the control unit 704 may be a combination of two or more microprocessors.
The memory 706 may be implemented as a classical nonvolatile or volatile memory used in the modern electronic computing machines. As an example, the nonvolatile memory may include Read-Only Memory (ROM), ferroelectric Random-Access Memory (RAM), Programmable ROM (PROM), Electrically Erasable PROM (EEPROM), solid state drive (SSD), flash memory, magnetic disk storage (such as hard drives and magnetic tapes), optical disc storage (such as CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs), etc. As for the volatile memory, examples thereof include Dynamic RAM, Synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), Double Data Rate SDRAM (DDR SDRAM), Static RAM, etc.
The executable instructions 708 stored in the memory 706 may be configured as a computer executable code which causes the control unit 704 to perform the quantum computing operations by using the circuit 702. The computer executable code for carrying out the quantum computing operations may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, such as Java, C++, or the like. In some examples, the computer executable code may be in the form of a high-level language or in a pre-compiled form, and be generated by an interpreter (also pre-stored in the memory 706) on the fly.
Although the exemplary embodiments of the invention are described herein, it should be noted that various changes and modifications could be made in the embodiments of the invention, without departing from the scope of legal protection which is defined by the appended claims. In the appended claims, the word “comprising” does not exclude other elements or operations, and the indefinite article “a” or “an” does not exclude a plurality. The mere fact that certain measures are recited in mutually different dependent claims does not indicate that a combination of these measures cannot be used to advantage.
This application is a continuation of International patent application No. PCT/FI2021/050538, filed on Jul. 21, 2021, and entitled, “TUNABLE RESONATOR-RESONATOR COUPLING CIRCUIT AND QUANTUM COMPUTING APPARATUS COMPRISING THEREOF,” the disclosure of which is expressly incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | PCT/FI2021/050538 | Jul 2021 | US |
Child | 18374867 | US |