Quantum control of bosonic modes with superconducting circuits

Autonomous Stabilization of Fock States in an Oscillator against Multiphoton Losses

Fock states with a well-defined number of photons in an oscillator have shown a wide range of applications in quantum information science. Nonetheless, their usefulness has been marred by single and multiphoton losses due to unavoidable environment-induced dissipation. Though several dissipation engineering methods have been developed to counteract the leading single-photon-loss error, averting multiple-photon losses remains elusive. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a dissipation engineering method that autonomously stabilizes multiphoton Fock states against losses of multiple photons using a cascaded selective photon-addition operation in a superconducting quantum circuit. Through measuring the photon-number populations and Wigner tomography of the oscillator states, we observe a prolonged preservation of nonclassical Wigner negativities for the stabilized Fock states |N⟩ with N=1, 2, 3 for a duration of about 10 ms. Furthermore, the dissipation engineering method demonstrated here also facilitates the implementation of a nonunitary operation for resetting a binomially encoded logical qubit. These results highlight potential applications in error-correctable quantum information processing against multiple-photon-loss errors.

Autonomous Quantum Error Correction of Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill States

The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code encodes a logical qubit into a bosonic system with resilience against single-photon loss, the predominant error in most bosonic systems. Here we present experimental results demonstrating quantum error correction of GKP states based on reservoir engineering of a superconducting device. Error correction is made fully autonomous through an unconditional reset of an auxiliary transmon qubit. We show that the lifetime of the logical qubit is increased from quantum error correction, therefore reaching the point at which more errors are corrected than generated.

Universal control of a bosonic mode via drive-activated native cubic interactions

Linear bosonic modes offer a hardware-efficient alternative for quantum information processing but require access to some nonlinearity for universal control. The lack of nonlinearity in photonics has led to encoded measurement-based quantum computing, which relies on linear operations but requires access to resourceful ('nonlinear') quantum states, such as cubic phase states. In contrast, superconducting microwave circuits offer engineerable nonlinearities but suffer from static Kerr nonlinearity. Here, we demonstrate universal control of a bosonic mode composed of a superconducting nonlinear asymmetric inductive element (SNAIL) resonator, enabled by native nonlinearities in the SNAIL element. We suppress static nonlinearities by operating the SNAIL in the vicinity of its Kerr-free point and dynamically activate nonlinearities up to third order by fast flux pulses. We experimentally realize a universal set of generalized squeezing operations, as well as the cubic phase gate, and exploit them to deterministically prepare a cubic phase state in 60 ns. Our results initiate the experimental field of polynomial quantum computing, in the continuous-variables notion originally introduced by Lloyd and Braunstein.

Fast generation of Schrödinger cat states using a Kerr-tunable superconducting resonator

Schrödinger cat states, quantum superpositions of macroscopically distinct classical states, are an important resource for quantum communication, quantum metrology and quantum computation. Especially, cat states in a phase space protected against phase-flip errors can be used as a logical qubit. However, cat states, normally generated in three-dimensional cavities and/or strong multi-photon drives, are facing the challenges of scalability and controllability. Here, we present a strategy to generate and preserve cat states in a coplanar superconducting circuit by the fast modulation of Kerr nonlinearity. At the Kerr-free work point, our cat states are passively preserved due to the vanishing Kerr effect. We are able to prepare a 2-component cat state in our chip-based device with a fidelity reaching 89.1% under a 96 ns gate time. Our scheme shows an excellent route to constructing a chip-based bosonic quantum processor.

Inductively shunted transmons exhibit noise insensitive plasmon states and a fluxon decay exceeding 3 hours

Currently available quantum processors are dominated by noise, which severely limits their applicability and motivates the search for new physical qubit encodings. In this work, we introduce the inductively shunted transmon, a weakly flux-tunable superconducting qubit that offers charge offset protection for all levels and a 20-fold reduction in flux dispersion compared to the state-of-the-art resulting in a constant coherence over a full flux quantum. The parabolic confinement provided by the inductive shunt as well as the linearity of the geometric superinductor facilitates a high-power readout that resolves quantum jumps with a fidelity and QND-ness of >90% and without the need for a Josephson parametric amplifier. Moreover, the device reveals quantum tunneling physics between the two prepared fluxon ground states with a measured average decay time of up to 3.5 h. In the future, fast time-domain control of the transition matrix elements could offer a new path forward to also achieve full qubit control in the decay-protected fluxon basis.

Quantum Associative Memory with a Single Driven-Dissipative Nonlinear Oscillator

Algorithms for associative memory typically rely on a network of many connected units. The prototypical example is the Hopfield model, whose generalizations to the quantum realm are mainly based on open quantum Ising models. We propose a realization of associative memory with a single driven-dissipative quantum oscillator exploiting its infinite degrees of freedom in phase space. The model can improve the storage capacity of discrete neuron-based systems in a large regime and we prove successful state discrimination between n coherent states, which represent the stored patterns of the system. These can be tuned continuously by modifying the driving strength, constituting a modified learning rule. We show that the associative-memory capability is inherently related to the existence of a spectral separation in the Liouvillian superoperator, which results in a long timescale separation in the dynamics corresponding to a metastable phase.

Observing the quantum topology of light

Topological photonics provides a powerful platform to explore topological physics beyond traditional electronic materials and shows promising applications in light transport and lasers. Classical degrees of freedom are routinely used to construct topological light modes in real or synthetic dimensions. Beyond the classical topology, the inherent quantum nature of light provides a wealth of fundamentally distinct topological states. Here we implement experiments on topological states of quantized light in a superconducting circuit, with which one- and two-dimensional Fock-state lattices are constructed. We realize rich topological physics including topological zero-energy states of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, strain-induced pseudo-Landau levels, valley Hall effect, and Haldane chiral edge currents. Our study extends the topological states of light to the quantum regime, bridging topological phases of condensed-matter physics with circuit quantum electrodynamics, and offers a freedom in controlling the quantum states of multiple resonators.

Boosting the Quantum State of a Cavity with Floquet Driving

The striking nonlinear effects exhibited by cavity QED systems make them a powerful tool in modern condensed matter and atomic physics. A recently discovered example is the quantized pumping of energy into a cavity by a strongly coupled, periodically driven spin. We uncover a remarkable feature of these energy pumps: they coherently translate, or boost, a quantum state of the cavity in the Fock basis. Current optical cavity and circuit QED experiments can realize the required Hamiltonian in a rotating frame. Boosting thus enables the preparation of highly excited nonclassical cavity states in near-term experiments.