arXiv subjects

María José Sánchez

Publications and source records attributed to María José Sánchez.

16 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Time-optimal quantum gates with bang-bang control in multilevel systems

We determine the optimal quantum manipulation protocols for implementing high-fidelity, fast single-qubit gates. We demonstrate that the time-optimal pulse sequence is a ``bang-bang'' sequence: discrete pulses of either positive or negative maximum amplitude or zero. The non-adiabatic bang-bang pulse sequence minimizes gate duration providing a speedup for low-frequency architectures. We first derive the protocol for a transversally driven two-level system, extracting exact analytic expressions for minimum gate times. We then extend this framework to general multilevel architectures, identifying conditions that enable the coherent suppression of leakage errors. Using the fluxonium circuit as a representative case study, we optimize $X/2$ and $Y/2$ gates through a combination of discrete bang sequences and continuous waveform smoothing. This approach preserves near-optimal execution speeds while mitigating transitions outside the computational subspace. Open-system simulations demonstrate that these sequences outperform commensurate and resonant pulse schemes across different fluxonium regimes, achieving low-error manipulation significantly faster than standard resonant control, even in the presence of $1/f$ flux noise and dissipation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Floquet Entanglement Generation in Parametrically Driven Coupled Superconducting Qubits

We investigate the dynamical generation of entanglement in a system of two superconducting qubits coupled through a parametrically driven longitudinal interaction. Using Floquet theory and exact numerical simulations, we analyze the time evolution of the system initialized in a separable ground state. Our results reveal a nontrivial mechanism for entanglement generation, fundamentally distinct from the conventional resonant excitation to an entangled eigenstate. We show that this mechanism emerges when two initially separable eigenstates are mixed by the periodic driving under multiphoton resonance conditions. Since the effect cannot be captured within a standard rotating-wave approximation, we employ generalized Van Vleck near-degenerate perturbation theory to derive an effective analytical description. Within this framework, we demonstrate that the sustained entanglement originates from the hybridization of the dominant Floquet states, namely those with the largest overlap with the initial ground state. Furthermore, the degree of entanglement can be efficiently controlled through the driving amplitude. In particular, for specific amplitudes, the entanglement is fully suppressed. We term this phenomenon as coherent destruction of entanglement.

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arXiv2025

Modeling Memristor-Based Neural Networks with Manhattan Update: Trade-offs in Learning Performance and Energy Consumption

We present a systematic study of memristor based neural networks trained with the hardware-friendly Manhattan update rule, focusing on the trade offs between learning performance and energy consumption. Using realistic models of potentiation/depression (P/D) curves, we evaluate the impact of nonlinearity (NLI), conductance range, and number of accessible levels on both a single perceptron (SP) and a deep neural network (DNN) trained on the MNIST dataset. Our results show that SPs tolerate P/D nonlinearity up to NLI $\leq 0.01$, while DNNs require stricter conditions of NLI $\leq$ 0.001 to preserve accuracy. Increasing the number of discrete conductance states improves convergence, effectively acting as a finer learning rate. We further propose a strategy where one memristor of each differential pair is fixed, reducing redundant memristor conductance updates. This approach lowers training energy by nearly 50% in DNN with little to no loss in accuracy. Our findings highlight the importance of device algorithm codesign in enabling scalable, low power neuromorphic hardware for edge AI applications.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Synaptic plasticity in Co/Nb:STO memristive devices: The role of oxygen vacancies

Neuromorphic computing aims to develop energy-efficient devices that mimic biological synapses. One promising approach involves memristive devices that can dynamically adjust their electrical resistance in response to stimuli, similar to synaptic weight changes in the brain. However, a key challenge is understanding and controlling the coexistence of different types of synaptic plasticity, such as short-term and long-term plasticity. In this work, we show that plasticity behaviors in Co/Nb:STO Schottky memristors originate from oxygen vacancy electromigration, which modulates the Schottky barrier and enables both short-term and long-term plasticity. Our experiments reveal that resistance changes follow a power-law during reading (short-term plasticity) and increase stepwise with successive pulses (long-term memory retention). These behaviors are successfully reproduced by our model, which demonstrates the correlation between oxygen vacancy distribution and Schottky barrier modulation. Our findings highlight these memristors as promising candidates for neuromorphic applications.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Landau-Zener-Stückelberg spectroscopy of a fluxonium quantum circuit

In this work, we study the time-averaged populations obtained for a fluxonium circuit under a large amplitude nonresonant periodic drive. We present numerical simulations of the time evolution which consider the multi-level structure of the driven quantum circuit, looking for a realistic modeling closer to experimental implementations. The Landau-Zener-Stückelberg spectra show resonances that can be understood as originated from constructive interference favoring transitions to higher levels. For a truncated two-level system (TLS) the resonance patterns can be interpreted using a simplified description of the avoided crossing that takes into account the dynamic phase accumulated at each operation point. For the multilevel case, we derive an effective two-level Hamiltonian using a Schrieffer-Wolff transformation starting from the Floquet Hamiltonian in the Sambe space. Our study provides predictive insight into experimental outcomes, offering an intuitive interpretation that could also support the implementation of fast-non-adiabatic single-qubit gates and entangling protocols.

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arXiv2024

Oxygen vacancies kinetics in $TaO_{2-h}$/$Ta_{2}$$O_{5-x}$ memristive interfaces

Oxygen vacancies (OV) are pervasive in metal oxides and play a pivotal role in the switching behaviour of oxide-based memristive devices. In this work we address, through a combination of experiments and theoretical simulations, OV dynamics in $Pt/TaO_{2-h}/Ta_{2}O_{5-x}/TaO_${2-y}$/Pt$ devices. In particular, we focus on the RESET transition (from low to high resistance), induced by the application of electrical pulse(s), by choosing different initial OV profiles and studying their kinetics during the mentioned process. We demonstrate that by selecting specific OV profiles it is possible to tune the characteristic time-scale of the RESET. Finally, we show that the implementation of gradual RESETs, induced by applying many (small) successive pulses, allows estimating the activation energies involved in the OV electromigration process. Our results help paving the way for OV engineering aiming at optimizing key memristive figures such as switching speed or power consumption, which are highly relevant for neuromorphic or in-memory computing implementations.

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arXiv2023

Effect of memristorś potentiation-depression curves peculiarities in the convergence of physical perceptrons

Neuromorphic computing aims to emulate the architecture and information processing mechanisms of the mammalian brain. This includes the implementation by hardware of neural networks. Oxide-based memristor arrays with cross-bar architecture appear as a possible physical implementation of neural networks.In this paper, we obtain experimental potentiation-depression (P-D) curves on different manganite-based memristive systems and simulate the learning process of perceptrons for character recognition. We analyze how the specific characteristics of the P-D curves affect the convergence time -- characterized by the EPOCHs-to-convergence (ETC) parameter -- of the network. Our work shows that ETC is reduced for systems displaying P-D curves with relatively low granularity and non-linear and asymmetric response. In addition, we also show that noise injection during the synaptic weight actualization further reduces the ETC. The results obtained here are expected to contribute to the optimization of hardware neural networks based on memristors cross-bar arrays.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Oxygen vacancy dynamics in Pt/TiOx/TaOy/Pt memristors: exchange with the environment and internal electromigration

Memristors are expected to be one of the key building blocks for the development of new bio-inspired nanoelectronics. Memristive effects in transition metal oxides are usually linked to the electromigration at the nanoscale of charged oxygen vacancies (OV). In this paper we address, for Pt/TiOx/TaOy/Pt devices, the exchange of OV between the device and the environment upon the application of electrical stress. From a combination of experiments and theoretical simulations we determine that both TiOx and TaOy layers oxidize, via environmental oxygen uptake, during the electroforming process. Once the memristive effect is stabilized (post-forming behavior) our results suggest that oxygen exchange with the environment is suppressed and the OV dynamics that drives the memristive behavior is restricted to an internal electromigration between TiOx and TaOy layers. Our work provides relevant information for the design of reliable binary oxide memristive devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Dissipative entanglement generation between two driven qubits in circuit quantum electrodynamics

An entangled state generation protocol for a system of two qubits driven with an ac signal and coupled through a resonator is introduced. We explain the mechanism of entanglement generation in terms of an interplay between unitary Landau-Zener-Stuckelberg (LZS) transitions induced for appropriate amplitudes and frequencies of the applied ac signal and dissipative processes dominated by photon loss. In this way, we found that the steady state of the system can be tuned to be arbitrarily close to a Bell state, which is independent of the initial state. Effective two-qubit Hamiltonians that reproduce the resonance patterns associated with LZS transitions are derived.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Efficient steady state entanglement generation in strongly driven coupled qubits

We report on a mechanism to optimize the generation of steady-state entanglement in a system of coupled qubits driven by microwave fields. Due to the interplay between Landau-Zener-Stückerlberg pumping involving three levels and a subsequent fast relaxation channel, which is activated by tuning the qubits-reservoir couplings, a maximally entangled state can be populated. This mechanism does not require from the fine-tuning of multiphoton-resonances but depends on the sign of the qubit-qubit coupling. In particular, we find that by a proper design of the system parameters and the driving protocol, the two-qubits steady-state concurrence can attain values close to 1 in a wide range of driving amplitudes. Our results may be useful to gain further insight into entanglement control and manipulation in dissipative quantum systems exposed to strong driving.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Quantum emulation of coherent backscattering in a system of superconducting qubits

In condensed matter systems, coherent backscattering and quantum interference in the presence of time-reversal symmetry lead to well-known phenomena such as weak localization (WL) and universal conductance fluctuations (UCF). Here we use multi-pass Landau-Zener transitions at the avoided crossing of a highly-coherent superconducting qubit to emulate these phenomena. The average and standard deviation of the qubit transition rate exhibit a dip and peak when the driving waveform is time-reversal symmetric, analogous to WL and UCF, respectively. The higher coherence of this qubit enabled the realization of both effects, in contrast to earlier work arXiv:1204.6428, which successfully emulated UCF, but did not observe WL. This demonstration illustrates the use of non-adiabatic control to implement quantum emulation with superconducting qubits.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Landau-Zener-Stückelberg Interferometry in dissipative Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics

We study Landau-Zener-Stückelberg (LZS) interferometry in a cQED architecture under effects of dissipation. To be specific, we consider a superconducting qubit driven by a dc+ac signal and coupled to a transmission line resonator, but our results are valid for general qubit-resonators devices. To take the environment into account, we assume that the resonator is coupled to an ohmic quantum bath. The Floquet-Born-Markov master equation is numerically solved to obtain the dynamics of the system for arbitrary amplitude of the drive and different time scales. We unveil important differences in the resonant patterns between the Strong Coupling and Ultra Strong Coupling regimes in the qubit-resonator interaction, which are mainly due to the magnitude of photonic gaps in the energy spectrum of the system. We identify in the LZS patterns the contribution of the qubit gap and the photonic gaps, showing that for large driving amplitudes the patterns present a weaving structure due to the combined intercrossing of the different gaps contributions.

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arXiv2018

Oxygen vacancies dynamics in redox-based interfaces: Tailoring the memristive response

Redox-based memristive devices are among the alternatives for the next generation of non volatile memories, but also candidates to emulate the behavior of synapses in neuromorphic computing devices. It is nowadays well established that the motion of oxygen vacancies (OV) at the nanoscale is the key mechanism to reversibly switch metal/insulator/metal structures from insulating to conducting, i.e. to accomplish the resistive switching effect. The control of OV dynamics has a direct effect on the resistance changes, and therefore on different figures of memristive devices, such as switching speed, retention, endurance or energy consumption. Advances in this direction demand not only experimental techniques that allow for measurements of OV dynamics, but also of theoretical studies that shed light on the involved mechanisms. Along this goal, we analize the OV dynamics in redox interfaces formed when an oxidizable metallic electrode is in contact with the insulating oxide. We show how the transfer of OV can be manipulated by using different electrical stimuli protocols to optimize device figures such as the ON/OFF ratio or the energy dissipation linked to the writing process. Analytical expressions for attained resistance values, including the high and low resistance states are derived in terms of total transferred OV in a nanoscale region of the interface. Our predictions are validated with experiments performed in Ti/La$_{1/3}$Ca$_{2/3}$MnO$_{3}$ redox memristive devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Driving controlled entanglement in coupled flux qubits

We study the manipulation of quantum entanglement by periodic external fields. As an entanglement measure we compute numerically the concurrence of two flux qubits coupled inductively and/or capacitively, both driven by a dc+ac magnetic flux. Also we find an analytical lower bound for the concurrence, where the dominant terms correspond to the concurrence in the Floquet states. We show that it is possible to create or destroy entanglement in a controlled way by tuning the system at or near multiphoton resonances. We find that when the driving term of the Hamiltonian does not commute with the qubit-qubit interaction term, the control of the entanglement induced by the driving field is more robust in parameter space. This implies that capacitively coupled two flux qubits are more convenient for controlling entanglement through ac driving fluxes.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2016

Mesoscopic fluctuations in biharmonically driven flux qubits

We investigate flux qubits driven by a biharmonic magnetic signal, with a phase lag that acts as an effective time reversal broken parameter. The driving induced transition rate between the ground and the excited state of the flux qubit can be thought as an effective transmitance, profiting from a direct analogy between interference effects at avoided level crossings and scattering events in disordered electronic systems. For time scales prior to full relaxation but large compared to the decoherence time, this characteristic rate has been accessed experimentally and its sensitivity with both the phase lag and the dc flux detuning explored. In this way signatures of Universal Conductance Fluctuations-like effects have recently been analized in flux qubits and compared with a phenomenological model that only accounts for decoherence, as a classical noise. We here solve the full dynamics of the driven flux qubit in contact with a quantum bath employing the Floquet Markov Master equation. Within this formalism relaxation and decoherence rates result strongly dependent on both the phase lag and the dc flux detuning. Consequently, the associated pattern of fluctuations in the characteristic rates display important differences with those obtained within the mentioned phenomenological model. In particular we demonstrate the Weak Localization-like effect in the averages values of the relaxation rate. Our predictions can be tested for accessible, but longer time scales than the current experimental times.

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arXiv2010

Large Amplitude Harmonic Driving of Highly Coherent Flux Qubits

The device for the Josephson flux qubit (DJFQ) can be considered as a solid state artificial atom with multiple energy levels. When a large amplitude harmonic excitation is applied to the system, transitions at the energy levels avoided crossings produce visible changes in the qubit population over many driven periods that are accompanied by a rich pattern of interference phenomena. We present a Floquet treatment of the periodically time-dependent Schrödinger equation of the strongly driven qubit beyond the standard two levels approach. For low amplitudes, the average probability of a given sign of the persistent current qubit exhibits, as a function of the static flux detuning and the driving amplitude, Landau-Zener-Stückelberg interference patterns that evolve into complex diamond-like patterns for large amplitudes. In the case of highly coherent flux qubits we find that the higher order diamonds can not be simply described relying on a two-level approximations. In addition we propose a new spectroscopic method based on starting the system in the first excited state instead of in the ground state, which can give further information on the energy level spectrum and dynamics in the case of highly coherent flux qubits. We compare our numerical results with recent experiments that perform amplitude spectroscopy to probe the energy spectrum of the artificial atom.

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