arXiv subjects

Colm A. Ryan

Publications and source records attributed to Colm A. Ryan.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Hardware-efficient quantum error correction via concatenated bosonic qubits

In order to solve problems of practical importance, quantum computers will likely need to incorporate quantum error correction, where a logical qubit is redundantly encoded in many noisy physical qubits. The large physical-qubit overhead typically associated with error correction motivates the search for more hardware-efficient approaches. Here, using a microfabricated superconducting quantum circuit, we realize a logical qubit memory formed from the concatenation of encoded bosonic cat qubits with an outer repetition code of distance $d=5$. The bosonic cat qubits are passively protected against bit flips using a stabilizing circuit. Cat-qubit phase-flip errors are corrected by the repetition code which uses ancilla transmons for syndrome measurement. We realize a noise-biased CX gate which ensures bit-flip error suppression is maintained during error correction. We study the performance and scaling of the logical qubit memory, finding that the phase-flip correcting repetition code operates below threshold, with logical phase-flip error decreasing with code distance from $d=3$ to $d=5$. Concurrently, the logical bit-flip error is suppressed with increasing cat-qubit mean photon number. The minimum measured logical error per cycle is on average $1.75(2)\%$ for the distance-3 code sections, and $1.65(3)\%$ for the longer distance-5 code, demonstrating the effectiveness of bit-flip error suppression throughout the error correction cycle. These results, where the intrinsic error suppression of the bosonic encodings allows us to use a hardware-efficient outer error correcting code, indicate that concatenated bosonic codes are a compelling paradigm for reaching fault-tolerant quantum computation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Demonstrating a long-coherence dual-rail erasure qubit using tunable transmons

Quantum error correction with erasure qubits promises significant advantages over standard error correction due to favorable thresholds for erasure errors. To realize this advantage in practice requires a qubit for which nearly all errors are such erasure errors, and the ability to check for erasure errors without dephasing the qubit. We demonstrate that a "dual-rail qubit" consisting of a pair of resonantly coupled transmons can form a highly coherent erasure qubit, where transmon $T_1$ errors are converted into erasure errors and residual dephasing is strongly suppressed, leading to millisecond-scale coherence within the qubit subspace. We show that single-qubit gates are limited primarily by erasure errors, with erasure probability $p_\text{erasure} = 2.19(2)\times 10^{-3}$ per gate while the residual errors are $\sim 40$ times lower. We further demonstrate mid-circuit detection of erasure errors while introducing $< 0.1\%$ dephasing error per check. Finally, we show that the suppression of transmon noise allows this dual-rail qubit to preserve high coherence over a broad tunable operating range, offering an improved capacity to avoid frequency collisions. This work establishes transmon-based dual-rail qubits as an attractive building block for hardware-efficient quantum error correction.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

OpenQASM 3: A broader and deeper quantum assembly language

Quantum assembly languages are machine-independent languages that traditionally describe quantum computation in the circuit model. Open quantum assembly language (OpenQASM 2) was proposed as an imperative programming language for quantum circuits based on earlier QASM dialects. In principle, any quantum computation could be described using OpenQASM 2, but there is a need to describe a broader set of circuits beyond the language of qubits and gates. By examining interactive use cases, we recognize two different timescales of quantum-classical interactions: real-time classical computations that must be performed within the coherence times of the qubits, and near-time computations with less stringent timing. Since the near-time domain is adequately described by existing programming frameworks, we choose in OpenQASM 3 to focus on the real-time domain, which must be more tightly coupled to the execution of quantum operations. We add support for arbitrary control flow as well as calling external classical functions. In addition, we recognize the need to describe circuits at multiple levels of specificity, and therefore we extend the language to include timing, pulse control, and gate modifiers. These new language features create a multi-level intermediate representation for circuit development and optimization, as well as control sequence implementation for calibration, characterization, and error mitigation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Experimental demonstration of Pauli-frame randomization on a superconducting qubit

The promise of quantum computing with imperfect qubits relies on the ability of a quantum computing system to scale cheaply through error correction and fault-tolerance. While fault-tolerance requires relatively mild assumptions about the nature of qubit errors, the overhead associated with coherent and non-Markovian errors can be orders of magnitude larger than the overhead associated with purely stochastic Markovian errors. One proposal to address this challenge is to randomize the circuits of interest, shaping the errors to be stochastic Pauli errors but leaving the aggregate computation unaffected. The randomization technique can also suppress couplings to slow degrees of freedom associated with non-Markovian evolution. Here we demonstrate the implementation of Pauli-frame randomization in a superconducting circuit system, exploiting a flexible programming and control infrastructure to achieve this with low effort. We use high-accuracy gate-set tomography to characterize in detail the properties of the circuit error, with and without the randomization procedure, which allows us to make rigorous statements about Markovianity as well as the nature of the observed errors. We demonstrate that randomization suppresses signatures of non-Markovian evolution to statistically insignificant levels, from a Markovian model violation ranging from $43σ$ to $1987σ$, down to violations between $0.3σ$ and $2.7σ$ under randomization. Moreover, we demonstrate that, under randomization, the experimental errors are well described by a Pauli error model, with model violations that are similarly insignificant (between $0.8σ$ and $2.7σ$). Importantly, all these improvements in the model accuracy were obtained without degradation to fidelity, and with some improvements to error rates as quantified by the diamond norm.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

A quantum-classical cloud platform optimized for variational hybrid algorithms

In order to support near-term applications of quantum computing, a new compute paradigm has emerged--the quantum-classical cloud--in which quantum computers (QPUs) work in tandem with classical computers (CPUs) via a shared cloud infrastructure. In this work, we enumerate the architectural requirements of a quantum-classical cloud platform, and present a framework for benchmarking its runtime performance. In addition, we walk through two platform-level enhancements, parametric compilation and active qubit reset, that specifically optimize a quantum-classical architecture to support variational hybrid algorithms (VHAs), the most promising applications of near-term quantum hardware. Finally, we show that integrating these two features into the Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services (QCS) platform results in considerable improvements to the latencies that govern algorithm runtime.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Methods for Measuring Magnetic Flux Crosstalk Between Tunable Transmons

In the gate model of quantum computing, a program is typically decomposed into a sequence of 1- and 2-qubit gates that are realized as control pulses acting on the system. A key requirement for a scalable control system is that the qubits are addressable - that control pulses act only on the targeted qubits. The presence of control crosstalk makes this addressability requirement difficult to meet. In order to provide metrics that can drive requirements for decreasing crosstalk, we present three measurements that directly quantify the DC and AC flux crosstalk present between tunable transmons, with sensitivities as fine as 0.001%. We develop the theory to connect AC flux crosstalk measures to the infidelity of a parametrically activated two-qubit gate. We employ quantum process tomography in the presence of crosstalk to provide an empirical study of the effects of crosstalk on two-qubit gate fidelity.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Implementation of the XY interaction family with calibration of a single pulse

Near-term applications of quantum information processors will rely on optimized circuit implementations to minimize gate depth and therefore mitigate the impact of gate errors in noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers. More expressive gate sets can significantly reduce the gate depth of generic circuits. Similarly, structured algorithms can benefit from a gate set that more directly matches the symmetries of the problem. The XY interaction generates a family of gates that provides expressiveness well tailored to quantum chemistry as well as to combinatorial optimization problems, while also offering reductions in circuit depth for more generic circuits. Here we implement the full family of XY entangling gates in a transmon-based superconducting qubit architecture. We use a composite pulse scheme that requires calibration of only a single gate pulse and maintains constant gate time for all members of the family. This allows us to maintain a high fidelity implementation of the gate across all entangling angles. The average fidelity of gates sampled from this family ranges from $95.67 \pm 0.60\%$ to $99.01 \pm 0.15\%$, with a median fidelity of $97.35 \pm 0.17\%$, which approaches the coherence-limited gate fidelity of the qubit pair. We furthermore demonstrate the utility of XY in a quantum approximation optimization algorithm in enabling circuit depth reductions as compared to the CZ only case.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Nanosecond Reversal of Three-Terminal Spin Hall Effect Memories Sustained at Cryogenic Temperatures

We characterize the nanosecond pulse switching performance of the three-terminal magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs), driven by the spin Hall effect (SHE) in the channel, at a cryogenic temperature of 3 K. The SHE-MTJ devices exhibit reasonable magnetic switching and reliable current switching by as short pulses as 1 ns of $<10^{12}$ A/m$^{2}$ magnitude, exceeding the expectation from conventional macrospin model. The pulse switching bit error rates reach below $10^{-6}$ for < 10 ns pulses. Similar performance is achieved with exponentially decaying pulses expected to be delivered to the SHE-MTJ device by a nanocryotron device in parallel configuration of a realistic memory cell structure. These results suggest the viability of the SHE-MTJ structure as a cryogenic memory element for exascale superconducting computing systems.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2019

Assessing the Influence of Broadband Instrumentation Noise on Parametrically Modulated Superconducting Qubits

With superconducting transmon qubits --- a promising platform for quantum information processing --- two-qubit gates can be performed using AC signals to modulate a tunable transmon's frequency via magnetic flux through its SQUID loop. However, frequency tunablity introduces an additional dephasing mechanism from magnetic fluctuations. In this work, we experimentally study the contribution of instrumentation noise to flux instability and the resulting error rate of parametrically activated two-qubit gates. Specifically, we measure the qubit coherence time under flux modulation while injecting broadband noise through the flux control channel. We model the noise's effect using a dephasing rate model that matches well to the measured rates, and use it to prescribe a noise floor required to achieve a desired two-qubit gate infidelity. Finally, we demonstrate that low-pass filtering the AC signal used to drive two-qubit gates between the first and second harmonic frequencies can reduce qubit sensitivity to flux noise at the AC sweet spot (ACSS), confirming an earlier theoretical prediction. The framework we present to determine instrumentation noise floors required for high entangling two-qubit gate fidelity should be extensible to other quantum information processing systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Unsupervised Machine Learning on a Hybrid Quantum Computer

Machine learning techniques have led to broad adoption of a statistical model of computing. The statistical distributions natively available on quantum processors are a superset of those available classically. Harnessing this attribute has the potential to accelerate or otherwise improve machine learning relative to purely classical performance. A key challenge toward that goal is learning to hybridize classical computing resources and traditional learning techniques with the emerging capabilities of general purpose quantum processors. Here, we demonstrate such hybridization by training a 19-qubit gate model processor to solve a clustering problem, a foundational challenge in unsupervised learning. We use the quantum approximate optimization algorithm in conjunction with a gradient-free Bayesian optimization to train the quantum machine. This quantum/classical hybrid algorithm shows robustness to realistic noise, and we find evidence that classical optimization can be used to train around both coherent and incoherent imperfections.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Coherent spin-transfer precession switching in orthogonal spin-torque devices

We present experimental results and macrospin simulations of the switching characteristics of orthogonal spin-transfer devices incorporating an out-of-plane magnetized polarizing layer and an in-plane magnetized spin valve device at cryogenic temperatures. At $T=4$ K we demonstrate: high speed deterministic switching at short pulse lengths - down to 100 ps - with sufficient measurement statistics to establish a switching error rate of $10^{-5}$; coherent precessional switching at longer times; and ensemble decoherence effects at even longer times. Finite temperature macrospin models capture the precessional switching well but fail to fully reproduce all the decoherence and switching error behavior.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Efficient quantum microwave-to-optical conversion using electro-optic nanophotonic coupled-resonators

We propose a low noise, triply-resonant, electro-optic (EO) scheme for quantum microwave-to-optical conversion based on coupled nanophotonics resonators integrated with a superconducting qubit. Our optical system features a split resonance - a doublet - with a tunable frequency splitting that matches the microwave resonance frequency of the superconducting qubit. This is in contrast to conventional approaches where large optical resonators with free-spectral range comparable to the qubit microwave frequency are used. In our system, EO mixing between the optical pump coupled into the low frequency doublet mode and a resonance microwave photon results in an up-converted optical photon on resonance with high frequency doublet mode. Importantly, the down-conversion process, which is the source of noise, is suppressed in our scheme as the coupled-resonator system does not support modes at that frequency. Our device has at least an order of magnitude smaller footprint than the conventional devices, resulting in large overlap between optical and microwave fields and large photon conversion rate ($g/2π$) in the range of $\sim$5-15 kHz. Owing to large $g$ factor and doubly-resonant nature of our device, microwave-to-optical frequency conversion can be achieved with optical pump powers in the range of tens of microwatts, even with moderate values for optical $\it{Q}$ ($\sim 10^6$) and microwave $Q$ ($ \sim10^4$). The performance metrics of our device, with substantial improvement over the previous EO-based approaches, promise a scalable quantum microwave-to-optical conversion and networking of superconducting processors via optical fiber communication.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Hardware for Dynamic Quantum Computing

We describe the hardware, gateware, and software developed at Raytheon BBN Technologies for dynamic quantum information processing experiments on superconducting qubits. In dynamic experiments, real-time qubit state information is fedback or fedforward within a fraction of the qubits' coherence time to dynamically change the implemented sequence. The hardware presented here covers both control and readout of superconducting qubits. For readout we created a custom signal processing gateware and software stack on commercial hardware to convert pulses in a heterodyne receiver into qubit state assignments with minimal latency, alongside data taking capability. For control, we developed custom hardware with gateware and software for pulse sequencing and steering information distribution that is capable of arbitrary control flow on a fraction superconducting qubit coherence times. Both readout and control platforms make extensive use of FPGAs to enable tailored qubit control systems in a reconfigurable fabric suitable for iterative development.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2016

Robust Extraction of Tomographic Information via Randomized Benchmarking

We describe how randomized benchmarking can be used to reconstruct the unital part of any trace-preserving quantum map, which in turn is sufficient for the full characterization of any unitary evolution, or more generally, any unital trace-preserving evolution. This approach inherits randomized benchmarking's robustness to preparation, measurement, and gate imperfections, therefore avoiding systematic errors caused by these imperfections. We also extend these techniques to efficiently estimate the average fidelity of a quantum map to unitary maps outside of the Clifford group. The unitaries we consider correspond to large circuits commonly used as building blocks to achieve scalable, universal, and fault-tolerant quantum computation. Hence, we can efficiently verify all such subcomponents of a circuit-based universal quantum computer. In addition, we rigorously bound the time and sampling complexities of randomized benchmarking procedures, proving that the required non-linear estimation problem can be solved efficiently.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Demonstration of quantum advantage in machine learning

The main promise of quantum computing is to efficiently solve certain problems that are prohibitively expensive for a classical computer. Most problems with a proven quantum advantage involve the repeated use of a black box, or oracle, whose structure encodes the solution. One measure of the algorithmic performance is the query complexity, i.e., the scaling of the number of oracle calls needed to find the solution with a given probability. Few-qubit demonstrations of quantum algorithms, such as Deutsch-Jozsa and Grover, have been implemented across diverse physical systems such as nuclear magnetic resonance, trapped ions, optical systems, and superconducting circuits. However, at the small scale, these problems can already be solved classically with a few oracle queries, and the attainable quantum advantage is modest. Here we solve an oracle-based problem, known as learning parity with noise, using a five-qubit superconducting processor. Running classical and quantum algorithms on the same oracle, we observe a large gap in query count in favor of quantum processing. We find that this gap grows by orders of magnitude as a function of the error rates and the problem size. This result demonstrates that, while complex fault-tolerant architectures will be required for universal quantum computing, a quantum advantage already emerges in existing noisy systems

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Demonstration of Robust Quantum Gate Tomography via Randomized Benchmarking

Typical quantum gate tomography protocols struggle with a self-consistency problem: the gate operation cannot be reconstructed without knowledge of the initial state and final measurement, but such knowledge cannot be obtained without well-characterized gates. A recently proposed technique, known as randomized benchmarking tomography (RBT), sidesteps this self-consistency problem by designing experiments to be insensitive to preparation and measurement imperfections. We implement this proposal in a superconducting qubit system, using a number of experimental improvements including implementing each of the elements of the Clifford group in single `atomic' pulses and custom control hardware to enable large overhead protocols. We show a robust reconstruction of several single-qubit quantum gates, including a unitary outside the Clifford group. We demonstrate that RBT yields physical gate reconstructions that are consistent with fidelities obtained by randomized benchmarking.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

Efficient measurement of quantum gate error by interleaved randomized benchmarking

We describe a scalable experimental protocol for obtaining estimates of the error rate of individual quantum computational gates. This protocol, in which random Clifford gates are interleaved between a gate of interest, provides a bounded estimate of the average error of the gate under test so long as the average variation of the noise affecting the full set of Clifford gates is small. This technique takes into account both state preparation and measurement errors and is scalable in the number of qubits. We apply this protocol to a superconducting qubit system and find gate errors that compare favorably with the gate errors extracted via quantum process tomography.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2013

Tomography via Correlation of Noisy Measurement Records

We present methods and results of shot-by-shot correlation of noisy measurements to extract entangled state and process tomography in a superconducting qubit architecture. We show that averaging continuous values, rather than counting discrete thresholded values, is a valid tomographic strategy and is in fact the better choice in the low signal-to-noise regime. We show that the effort to measure $N$-body correlations from individual measurements scales exponentially with $N$, but with sufficient signal-to-noise the approach remains viable for few-body correlations. We provide a new protocol to optimally account for the transient behavior of pulsed measurements. Despite single-shot measurement fidelity that is less than perfect, we demonstrate appropriate processing to extract and verify entangled states and processes.

quant-ph↗