arXiv subjects

Andrew J. Kerman

Publications and source records attributed to Andrew J. Kerman.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Gate-dependent offset charge shifts and anharmonicity in gatemon qubits in the weak tunneling regime

Gatemon qubits are based on a superconductor-quantum dot-superconductor (S-QD-S) junction which enables in situ electrostatic tuning via a gate electrode. For a single-channel QD this structure gives rise to two subgap Andreev bound states (ABSs), and generally leads to a richer quantum phase dynamics as compared to conventional transmons. In a recent work [Phys. Rev. B 111, 214503 (2025)] we derived the quantum phase dynamics from a many-body treatment which leads to an effective gate voltage-dependent Hamiltonian that self-consistently incorporates the phase quantization. It predicts (i) a renormalization of the junction's effective capacitance and (ii) the presence of gate voltage and occupation-dependent charge offsets in junctions with tunneling asymmetry. Here, we quantify the observable impact of these effects on the qubit's energy spectrum and anharmonicity, by studying the interplay of the two Andreev branches as a function of dot-gate voltages and junction transparencies. We show the relation of these predictions to simplified gatemon models and propose a protocol to experimentally detect the predicted charge offsets.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Quantum dynamics of semiconductor quantum dot Josephson junctions

Josephson junctions constructed from superconductor-semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures have been used to realize a variety of voltage-tunable superconducting quantum devices, including qubits and parametric amplifiers. To date theoretical descriptions of these systems have been restricted to small quantum fluctuations of the junction phase, making them inapplicable to many experiments. In this work we relax this, employing a path-integral formulation where the phase quantum dynamics is obtained self-consistently from an underlying many-body formalism. Our method recovers previously-known results for small phase fluctuations, and predicts new effects outside of that limit: (i) system capacitances undergo a gate-voltage-dependent renormalization; and (ii) an additional charge offset appears for asymmetric junctions. Our main results can be summarized in terms of a single-particle Hamiltonian, which can be directly compared to that of an ordinary Josephson junction. This more general theory could be a first step towards designing new quantum devices that go qualitatively beyond voltage-tunable variants of previously-known circuits.

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arXiv2022

Demonstration of tunable three-body interactions between superconducting qubits

Nonpairwise multi-qubit interactions present a useful resource for quantum information processors. Their implementation would facilitate more efficient quantum simulations of molecules and combinatorial optimization problems, and they could simplify error suppression and error correction schemes. Here we present a superconducting circuit architecture in which a coupling module mediates 2-local and 3-local interactions between three flux qubits by design. The system Hamiltonian is estimated via multi-qubit pulse sequences that implement Ramsey-type interferometry between all neighboring excitation manifolds in the system. The 3-local interaction is coherently tunable over several MHz via the coupler flux biases and can be turned off, which is important for applications in quantum annealing, analog quantum simulation, and gate-model quantum computation.

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arXiv2022

Superconducting-semiconducting voltage-tunable qubits in the third dimension

We propose superconducting-semiconducting (super-semi) qubit and coupler designs based on high-quality, compact through-silicon vias (TSVs). An interposer "probe" wafer containing TSVs is used to contact a sample wafer with, for example, a superconductor-proximitized, epitaxially-grown, germanium quantum well. By utilizing the capacitance of the probe wafer TSVs, the majority of the electric field in the qubits is pulled away from lossy regions in the semiconducting wafer. Through simulations, we find that the probe wafer can reduce the qubit's electric field participation in the sample wafer by an order of magnitude for thin substrates and remains small even when the epitaxial layer thickness approaches 100 $μ$m. We also show how this scheme is extensible to multi-qubit systems which have tunable qubit-qubit couplings without magnetic fields. This approach shrinks the on-chip footprint of voltage-tunable superconducting qubits and promises to accelerate the understanding of super-semi heterostructures in a variety of systems.

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arXiv2021

Distinguishing multi-spin interactions from lower-order effects

Multi-spin interactions can be engineered with artificial quantum spins. However, it is challenging to verify such interactions experimentally. Here we describe two methods to characterize the $n$-local coupling of $n$ spins. First, we analyze the variation of the transition energy of the static system as a function of local spin fields. Standard measurement techniques are employed to distinguish $n$-local interactions between up to five spins from lower-order contributions in the presence of noise and spurious fields and couplings. Second, we show a detection technique that relies on time dependent driving of the coupling term. Generalizations to larger system sizes are analyzed for both static and dynamic detection methods, and we find that the dynamic method is asymptotically optimal when increasing the system size. The proposed methods enable robust exploration of multi-spin interactions across a broad range of both coupling strengths and qubit modalities.

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arXiv2021

Demonstration of long-range correlations via susceptibility measurements in a one-dimensional superconducting Josephson spin chain

Spin chains have long been considered an effective medium for long-range interactions, entanglement generation, and quantum state transfer. In this work, we explore the properties of a spin chain implemented with superconducting flux circuits, designed to act as a connectivity medium between two superconducting qubits. The susceptibility of the chain is probed and shown to support long-range, cross chain correlations. In addition, interactions between the two end qubits, mediated by the coupler chain, are demonstrated. This work has direct applicability in near term quantum annealing processors as a means of generating long-range, coherent coupling between qubits.

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arXiv2021

A superconducting circuit realization of combinatorial gauge symmetry

We propose a superconducting quantum circuit based on a general symmetry principle -- combinatorial gauge symmetry -- designed to emulate topologically-ordered quantum liquids and serve as a foundation for the construction of topological qubits. The proposed circuit exhibits rich features: in the classical limit of large capacitances its ground state consists of two superimposed loop structures; one is a crystal of small loops containing disordered $U(1)$ degrees of freedom, and the other is a gas of loops of all sizes associated to $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological order. We show that these classical results carry over to the quantum case, where phase fluctuations arise from the presence of finite capacitances, yielding ${\mathbb Z}_2$ quantum topological order. A key feature of the exact gauge symmetry is that amplitudes connecting different ${\mathbb Z}_2$ loop states arise from paths having zero classical energy cost. As a result, these amplitudes are controlled by dimensional confinement rather than tunneling through energy barriers. We argue that this effect may lead to larger energy gaps than previous proposals which are limited by such barriers, potentially making it more likely for a topological phase to be experimentally observable. Finally, we discuss how our superconducting circuit realization of combinatorial gauge symmetry can be implemented in practice.

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arXiv2021

Fabrication of superconducting through-silicon vias

Increasing circuit complexity within quantum systems based on superconducting qubits necessitates high connectivity while retaining qubit coherence. Classical micro-electronic systems have addressed interconnect density challenges by using 3D integration with interposers containing through-silicon vias (TSVs), but extending these integration techniques to superconducting quantum systems is challenging. Here, we discuss our approach for realizing high-aspect-ratio superconducting TSVs\textemdash 10 $μ$m wide by 20 $μ$m long by 200 $μ$m deep\textemdash with densities of 100 electrically isolated TSVs per square millimeter. We characterize the DC and microwave performance of superconducting TSVs at cryogenic temperatures and demonstrate superconducting critical currents greater than 20 mA. These high-aspect-ratio, high critical current superconducting TSVs will enable high-density vertical signal routing within superconducting quantum processors.

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arXiv2020

Efficient numerical simulation of complex Josephson quantum circuits

Building on the established methods for superconducting circuit quantization, we present a new theoretical framework for approximate numerical simulation of Josephson quantum circuits. Simulations based on this framework provide access to a degree of complexity and circuit size heretofore inaccessible to quantitative analysis, including fundamentally new kinds of superconducting quantum devices. This capability is made possible by two improvements over previous methods: first, physically-motivated choices for the canonical circuit modes and physical basis states which allow a highly-efficient matrix representation; and second, an iterative method in which subsystems are diagonalized separately and then coupled together, at increasing size scales with each iteration, allowing diagonalization of Hamiltonians in extremely large Hilbert spaces to be approximated using a sequence of diagonalizations in much smaller spaces.

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arXiv2020

Solid-state qubits integrated with superconducting through-silicon vias

As superconducting qubit circuits become more complex, addressing a large array of qubits becomes a challenging engineering problem. Dense arrays of qubits benefit from, and may require, access via the third dimension to alleviate interconnect crowding. Through-silicon vias (TSVs) represent a promising approach to three-dimensional (3D) integration in superconducting qubit arrays -- provided they are compact enough to support densely-packed qubit systems without compromising qubit performance or low-loss signal and control routing. In this work, we demonstrate the integration of superconducting, high-aspect ratio TSVs -- 10 $μ$m wide by 20 $μ$m long by 200 $μ$m deep -- with superconducting qubits. We utilize TSVs for baseband control and high-fidelity microwave readout of qubits using a two-chip, bump-bonded architecture. We also validate the fabrication of qubits directly upon the surface of a TSV-integrated chip. These key 3D integration milestones pave the way for the control and readout of high-density superconducting qubit arrays using superconducting TSVs.

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arXiv2020

Automated discovery of superconducting circuits and its application to 4-local coupler design

Superconducting circuits have emerged as a promising platform to build quantum processors. The challenge of designing a circuit is to compromise between realizing a set of performance metrics and reducing circuit complexity and noise sensitivity. At the same time, one needs to explore a large design space, and computational approaches often yield long simulation times. Here we automate the circuit design task using SCILLA, a software for automated discovery of superconducting circuits. SCILLA performs a parallelized, closed-loop optimization to design circuit diagrams that match pre-defined properties such as spectral features and noise sensitivities. We employ it to discover 4-local couplers for superconducting flux qubits and identify a circuit that outperforms an existing proposal with similar circuit structure in terms of coupling strength and noise resilience for experimentally accessible parameters. This work demonstrates how automated discovery can facilitate the design of complex circuit architectures for quantum information processing.

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arXiv2019

Superconducting qubit circuit emulation of a vector spin-1/2

We propose a superconducting qubit circuit that can fully emulate a quantum vector spin-1/2, with an effective dipole moment having three independent components whose operators obey the commutation relations of a vector angular momentum in the computational subspace. Each component couples to an independently-controllable external bias, emulating the Zeeman effect due to a fictitious, vector magnetic field, and all three of these vector components remain relatively constant over a broad range of emulated total fields around zero. This capability, combined with established techniques for qubit coupling, should enable for the first time the direct hardware emulation of nearly arbitrary quantum spin-1/2 systems, including the canonical Heisenberg model. Furthermore, it would constitute a crucial step both towards realizing the full potential of quantum annealing, as well as exploring important quantum information processing capabilities that have so far been inaccessible to available hardware, such as quantum error suppression, Hamiltonian and holonomic quantum computing, and adiabatic quantum chemistry.

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arXiv2018

Distinguishing coherent and thermal photon noise in a circuit QED system

In the cavity-QED architecture, photon number fluctuations from residual cavity photons cause qubit dephasing due to the AC Stark effect. These unwanted photons originate from a variety of sources, such as thermal radiation, leftover measurement photons, and crosstalk. Using a capacitively-shunted flux qubit coupled to a transmission line cavity, we demonstrate a method that identifies and distinguishes coherent and thermal photons based on noise-spectral reconstruction from time-domain spin-locking relaxometry. Using these measurements, we attribute the limiting dephasing source in our system to thermal photons, rather than coherent photons. By improving the cryogenic attenuation on lines leading to the cavity, we successfully suppress residual thermal photons and achieve $T_1$-limited spin-echo decay time. The spin-locking noise spectroscopy technique can readily be applied to other qubit modalities for identifying general asymmetric non-classical noise spectra.

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arXiv2017

Coherent coupled qubits for quantum annealing

Quantum annealing is an optimization technique which potentially leverages quantum tunneling to enhance computational performance. Existing quantum annealers use superconducting flux qubits with short coherence times, limited primarily by the use of large persistent currents $I_\mathrm{p}$. Here, we examine an alternative approach, using qubits with smaller $I_\mathrm{p}$ and longer coherence times. We demonstrate tunable coupling, a basic building block for quantum annealing, between two flux qubits with small ($\sim 50~\mathrm{nA}$) persistent currents. Furthermore, we characterize qubit coherence as a function of coupler setting and investigate the effect of flux noise in the coupler loop on qubit coherence. Our results provide insight into the available design space for next-generation quantum annealers with improved coherence.

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arXiv2016

Suppressing relaxation in superconducting qubits by quasiparticle pumping

Dynamical error suppression techniques are commonly used to improve coherence in quantum systems. They reduce dephasing errors by applying control pulses designed to reverse erroneous coherent evolution driven by environmental noise. However, such methods cannot correct for irreversible processes such as energy relaxation. In this work, we investigate a complementary, stochastic approach to reducing errors: instead of deterministically reversing the unwanted qubit evolution, we use control pulses to shape the noise environment dynamically. In the context of superconducting qubits, we implement a pumping sequence to reduce the number of unpaired electrons (quasiparticles) in close proximity to the device. We report a 70% reduction in the quasiparticle density, resulting in a threefold enhancement in qubit relaxation times, and a comparable reduction in coherence variability.

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arXiv2014

Heralding efficiency and correlated-mode coupling of near-IR fiber coupled photon pairs

We report on a systematic experimental study of heralding efficiency and generation rate of telecom-band infrared photon pairs generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion and coupled to single mode optical fibers. We define the correlated-mode coupling efficiency--an inherent source efficiency--and explain its relation to heralding efficiency. For our experiment, we developed a reconfigurable computer controlled pump-beam and collection-mode optical apparatus which we used to measure the generation rate and correlated-mode coupling efficiency. The use of low-noise, high-efficiency superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors in this setup allowed us to explore focus configurations with low overall photon flux. The measured data agree well with theory and we demonstrated a correlated-mode coupling efficiency of $97 \pm 2\%$, which is the highest efficiency yet achieved for this type of system. These results confirm theoretical treatments and demonstrate that very high overall heralding efficiencies can, in principle, be achieved in quantum optical systems. It is expected that these results and techniques will be widely incorporated into future systems that require, or benefit from, a high heralding efficiency.

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arXiv2013

Flux-charge duality and topological quantum phase fluctuations in quasi-one-dimensional superconductors

It has long been thought that macroscopic phase coherence breaks down in effectively lower-dimensional superconducting systems even at zero temperature due to enhanced topological quantum phase fluctuations. In quasi-1D wires, these fluctuations are described in terms of "quantum phase-slip" (QPS): tunneling of the superconducting order parameter for the wire between states differing by $\pm2π$ in their relative phase between the wire's ends. Over the last several decades, many deviations from conventional bulk superconducting behavior have been observed in ultra-narrow superconducting nanowires, some of which have been identified with QPS. While at least some of the observations are consistent with existing theories for QPS, other observations in many cases point to contradictory conclusions or cannot be explained by these theories. Hence, a unified understanding of the nature of QPS, and its relationship to the various observations has yet to be achieved. In this paper we present a new model for QPS which takes as its starting point an idea originally postulated by Mooij and Nazarov [Nature Physics {\bf 2}, 169 (2006)]: that \textit{flux-charge duality}, a classical symmetry of Maxwell's equations, can be used to relate QPS to the well-known Josephson tunneling of Cooper pairs. Our model provides an alternative, and qualitatively different, conceptual basis for QPS and the phenomena which arise from it in experiments, and it appears to permit for the first time a unified understanding of observations across several different types of experiments and materials systems.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Quantum information processing using quasiclassical electromagnetic interactions between qubits and electrical resonators

Electrical resonators are widely used in quantum information processing, by engineering an electromagnetic interaction with qubits based on real or virtual exchange of microwave photons. This interaction relies on strong coupling between the qubits' transition dipole moments and the vacuum fluctuations of the resonator in the same manner as cavity QED, and has consequently come to be called "circuit QED" (cQED). Great strides in the control of quantum information have already been made experimentally using this idea. However, the central role played by photon exchange induced by quantum fluctuations in cQED does result in some characteristic limitations. In this paper, we discuss an alternative method for coupling qubits electromagnetically via a resonator, in which no photons are exchanged, and where the resonator need not have strong quantum fluctuations. Instead, the interaction can be viewed in terms of classical, effective "forces" exerted by the qubits on the resonator, and the resulting resonator dynamics used to produce qubit entanglement are purely classical in nature. We show how this type of interaction is similar to that encountered in the manipulation of atomic ion qubits, and we exploit this analogy to construct two-qubit entangling operations that are largely insensitive to thermal or other noise in the resonator, and to its quality factor. These operations are also extensible to larger numbers of qubits, allowing interactions to be selectively generated among any desired subset of those coupled to a single resonator. Our proposal is potentially applicable to a variety of physical qubit modalities, including superconducting and semiconducting solid-state qubits, trapped molecular ions, and possibly even electron spins in solids.

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