arXiv subjects

Matthew J. Reagor

Publications and source records attributed to Matthew J. Reagor.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Syncopated Dynamical Decoupling for Suppressing Crosstalk in Quantum Circuits

Theoretically understanding and experimentally characterizing and modifying the underlying Hamiltonian of a quantum system is of utmost importance in achieving high-fidelity quantum gates for quantum computing. In this work, we explore the use of dynamical decoupling (DD) in characterizing and suppressing undesired two-qubit couplings as well as the underlying single-qubit decoherence, both significant hurdles to achieving precise quantum control and realizing quantum computing on many hardware prototypes. Through discrete search of dynamical decoupling sequences, we identify sequences that protect against decoherence and selectively target unwanted two-qubit interactions of general form. On a transmon-qubit-based superconducting quantum device, we identify separate white and 1/f noise components underlying the single-qubit decoherence and a static ZZ coupling between pairs of qubits. A family of syncopated dynamical decoupling sequences is found and their efficiency demonstrated in two-qubit benchmarking experiments. The syncopated decoupling technique significantly boosts performance in a realistic algorithmic quantum circuit.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Design and execution of quantum circuits using tens of superconducting qubits and thousands of gates for dense Ising optimization problems

We develop a hardware-efficient ansatz for variational optimization, derived from existing ansatze in the literature, that parametrizes subsets of all interactions in the Cost Hamiltonian in each layer. We treat gate orderings as a variational parameter and observe that doing so can provide significant performance boosts in experiments. We carried out experimental runs of a compilation-optimized implementation of fully-connected Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Hamiltonians on a 50-qubit linear-chain subsystem of Rigetti Aspen-M-3 transmon processor. Our results indicate that, for the best circuit designs tested, the average performance at optimized angles and gate orderings increases with circuit depth (using more parameters), despite the presence of a high level of noise. We report performance significantly better than using a random guess oracle for circuits involving up to approx 5000 two-qubit and approx 5000 one-qubit native gates. We additionally discuss various takeaways of our results toward more effective utilization of current and future quantum processors for optimization.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Direct pulse-level compilation of arbitrary quantum logic gates on superconducting qutrits

Advanced simulations and calculations on quantum computers require high-fidelity implementations of quantum operations. The universal gateset approach builds complex unitaries from a small set of primitive gates, often resulting in a long gate sequence which is typically a leading factor in the total accumulated error. Compiling a complex unitary for processors with higher-dimensional logical elements, such as qutrits, exacerbates the accumulated error per unitary, since an even longer gate sequence is required. Optimal control methods promise time and resource efficient compact gate sequences and, therefore, higher fidelity. These methods generate pulses that can directly implement any complex unitary on a quantum device. In this work, we demonstrate any arbitrary qubit and qutrit gate can be realized with high-fidelity, which can significantly reduce the length of a gate sequence. We generate and test pulses for a large set of randomly selected arbitrary unitaries on several quantum processing units (QPUs): the LLNL Quantum Device and Integration Testbed (QuDIT) standard QPU and three of Rigetti QPUs: Ankaa-2, Ankaa-9Q-1, and Aspen-M-3. On the QuDIT platform's standard QPU, the average fidelity of random qutrit gates is 97.9+-0.5% measured with conventional QPT and 98.8+-0.6% from QPT with gate folding. Rigetti's Ankaa-2 achieves random qubit gates with an average fidelity of 98.4+-0.5% (conventional QPT) and 99.7+-0.1% (QPT with gate folding). On Ankaa-9Q-1 and Aspen-M-3, the average fidelities with conventional qubit QPT measurements were higher than 99%. We show that optimal control gates are robust to drift for at least three hours and that the same calibration parameters can be used for all implemented gates. Our work promises the calibration overheads for optimal control gates can be made small enough to enable efficient quantum circuits based on this technique.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Systematic Improvements in Transmon Qubit Coherence Enabled by Niobium Surface Encapsulation

We present a novel transmon qubit fabrication technique that yields systematic improvements in T$_1$ relaxation times. We fabricate devices using an encapsulation strategy that involves passivating the surface of niobium and thereby preventing the formation of its lossy surface oxide. By maintaining the same superconducting metal and only varying the surface structure, this comparative investigation examining different capping materials, such as tantalum, aluminum, titanium nitride, and gold, and film substrates across different qubit foundries definitively demonstrates the detrimental impact that niobium oxides have on the coherence times of superconducting qubits, compared to native oxides of tantalum, aluminum or titanium nitride. Our surface-encapsulated niobium qubit devices exhibit T$_1$ relaxation times 2 to 5 times longer than baseline niobium qubit devices with native niobium oxides. When capping niobium with tantalum, we obtain median qubit lifetimes above 300 microseconds, with maximum values up to 600 microseconds, that represent the highest lifetimes to date for superconducting qubits prepared on both sapphire and silicon. Our comparative structural and chemical analysis suggests why amorphous niobium oxides may induce higher losses compared to other amorphous oxides. These results are in line with high-accuracy measurements of the niobium oxide loss tangent obtained with ultra-high Q superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) cavities. This new surface encapsulation strategy enables even further reduction of dielectric losses via passivation with ambient-stable materials, while preserving fabrication and scalable manufacturability thanks to the compatibility with silicon processes.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Quantum-Enhanced Greedy Combinatorial Optimization Solver

Combinatorial optimization is a broadly attractive area for potential quantum advantage, but no quantum algorithm has yet made the leap. Noise in quantum hardware remains a challenge, and more sophisticated quantum-classical algorithms are required to bolster their performance. Here, we introduce an iterative quantum heuristic optimization algorithm to solve combinatorial optimization problems. The quantum algorithm reduces to a classical greedy algorithm in the presence of strong noise. We implement the quantum algorithm on a programmable superconducting quantum system using up to 72 qubits for solving paradigmatic Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Ising spin glass problems. We find the quantum algorithm systematically outperforms its classical greedy counterpart, signaling a quantum enhancement. Moreover, we observe an absolute performance comparable with a state-of-the-art semidefinite programming method. Classical simulations of the algorithm illustrate that a key challenge to reaching quantum advantage remains improving the quantum device characteristics.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Evaluating quantum generative models via imbalanced data classification benchmarks

A limited set of tools exist for assessing whether the behavior of quantum machine learning models diverges from conventional models, outside of abstract or theoretical settings. We present a systematic application of explainable artificial intelligence techniques to analyze synthetic data generated from a hybrid quantum-classical neural network adapted from twenty different real-world data sets, including solar flares, cardiac arrhythmia, and speech data. Each of these data sets exhibits varying degrees of complexity and class imbalance. We benchmark the quantum-generated data relative to state-of-the-art methods for mitigating class imbalance for associated classification tasks. We leverage this approach to elucidate the qualities of a problem that make it more or less likely to be amenable to a hybrid quantum-classical generative model.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Navigating the noise-depth tradeoff in adiabatic quantum circuits

Adiabatic quantum algorithms solve computational problems by slowly evolving a trivial state to the desired solution. On an ideal quantum computer, the solution quality improves monotonically with increasing circuit depth. By contrast, increasing the depth in current noisy computers introduces more noise and eventually deteriorates any computational advantage. What is the optimal circuit depth that provides the best solution? Here, we address this question by investigating an adiabatic circuit that interpolates between the paramagnetic and ferromagnetic ground states of the one-dimensional quantum Ising model. We characterize the quality of the final output by the density of defects $d$, as a function of the circuit depth $N$ and noise strength $σ$. We find that $d$ is well-described by the simple form $d_\mathrm{ideal}+d_\mathrm{noise}$, where the ideal case $d_\mathrm{ideal}\sim N^{-1/2}$ is controlled by the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, and the noise contribution scales as $d_\mathrm{noise}\sim Nσ^2$. It follows that the optimal number of steps minimizing the number of defects goes as $\simσ^{-4/3}$. We implement this algorithm on a noisy superconducting quantum processor and find that the dependence of the density of defects on the circuit depth follows the predicted non-monotonous behavior and agrees well with noisy simulations. Our work allows one to efficiently benchmark quantum devices and extract their effective noise strength $σ$.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Calibrating the Classical Hardness of the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm

Trading fidelity for scale enables approximate classical simulators such as matrix product states (MPS) to run quantum circuits beyond exact methods. A control parameter, the so-called bond dimension $χ$ for MPS, governs the allocated computational resources and the output fidelity. Here, we characterize the fidelity for the quantum approximate optimization algorithm by the expectation value of the cost function it seeks to minimize and find that it follows a scaling law $F\bigl(\lnχ\bigr/N\bigr)$ with $N$ the number of qubits. With $\lnχ$ amounting to the entanglement that an MPS can encode, we show that the relevant variable for investigating the fidelity is the entanglement per qubit. Importantly, our results calibrate the classical computational power required to achieve the desired fidelity and benchmark the performance of quantum hardware in a realistic setup. For instance, we quantify the hardness of performing better classically than a noisy superconducting quantum processor by readily matching its output to the scaling function. Moreover, we relate the global fidelity to that of individual operations and establish its relationship with $χ$ and $N$. We sharpen the requirements for noisy quantum computers to outperform classical techniques at running a quantum optimization algorithm in speed, size, and fidelity.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Hardware optimized parity check gates for superconducting surface codes

Error correcting codes use multi-qubit measurements to realize fault-tolerant quantum logic steps. In fact, the resources needed to scale-up fault-tolerant quantum computing hardware are largely set by this task. Tailoring next-generation processors for joint measurements, therefore, could result in improvements to speed, accuracy, or cost -- accelerating the development large-scale quantum computers. Here, we motivate such explorations by analyzing an unconventional surface code based on multi-body interactions between superconducting transmon qubits. Our central consideration, Hardware Optimized Parity (HOP) gates, achieves stabilizer-type measurements through simultaneous multi-qubit conditional phase accumulation. Despite the multi-body effects that underpin this approach, our estimates of logical faults suggest that this design can be at least as robust to realistic noise as conventional designs. We show a higher threshold of $1.25 \times 10^{-3}$ compared to the standard code's $0.79 \times 10^{-3}$. However, in the HOP code the logical error rate decreases more slowly with decreasing physical error rate. Our results point to a fruitful path forward towards extending gate-model platforms for error correction at the dawn of its empirical development.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

An entanglement perspective on the quantum approximate optimization algorithm

Many quantum algorithms seek to output a specific bitstring solving the problem of interest--or a few if the solution is degenerate. It is the case for the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) in the limit of large circuit depth, which aims to solve quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems. Hence, the expected final state for these algorithms is either a product state or a low-entangled superposition involving a few bitstrings. What happens in between the initial $N$-qubit product state $\vert 0\rangle^{\otimes N}$ and the final one regarding entanglement? Here, we consider the QAOA algorithm for solving the paradigmatic Max-Cut problem on different types of graphs. We study the entanglement growth and spread resulting from randomized and optimized QAOA circuits and find that there is a volume-law entanglement barrier between the initial and final states. We also investigate the entanglement spectrum in connection with random matrix theory. In addition, we compare the entanglement production with a quantum annealing protocol aiming to solve the same Max-Cut problems. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for the simulation of QAOA circuits with tensor network-based methods relying on low-entanglement for efficiency, such as matrix product states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Developing a Chemical and Structural Understanding of the Surface Oxide in a Niobium Superconducting Qubit

Superconducting thin films of niobium have been extensively employed in transmon qubit architectures. Although these architectures have demonstrated remarkable improvements in recent years, further improvements in performance through materials engineering will aid in large-scale deployment. Here, we use information retrieved from secondary ion mass spectrometry and electron microscopy to conduct a detailed assessment of the surface oxide that forms in ambient conditions for transmon test qubit devices patterned from a niobium film. We observe that this oxide exhibits a varying stoichiometry with NbO and NbO$_2$ found closer to the niobium film and Nb$_2$O$_5$ found closer to the surface. In terms of structural analysis, we find that the Nb$_2$O$_5$ region is semicrystalline in nature and exhibits randomly oriented grains on the order of 1-2 nm corresponding to monoclinic N-Nb$_2$O$_5$ that are dispersed throughout an amorphous matrix. Using fluctuation electron microscopy, we are able to map the relative crystallinity in the Nb$_2$O$_5$ region with nanometer spatial resolution. Through this correlative method, we observe that amorphous regions are more likely to contain oxygen vacancies and exhibit weaker bonds between the niobium and oxygen atoms. Based on these findings, we expect that oxygen vacancies likely serve as a decoherence mechanism in quantum systems.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Simulating long-range coherence of atoms and photons in quantum computers

Lasers and Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) exhibit macroscopic quantum coherence in seemingly unrelated ways. Lasers possess a well-defined global phase and are characterized by large fluctuations in the number of photons. In BECs of atoms, instead, the number of particles is conserved and the global phase is undefined. Here, we present a unified framework to simulate lasers and BECs states in gate-based quantum computers, by mapping bosonic particles to qubit excitations. Our approach relies on a scalable circuit that measures the total number of particles without destroying long-range coherence. We introduce complementary probes to measure the global and relative phase coherence of a quantum state, and demonstrate their functionality on a Rigetti quantum computer. Our work shows that particle-number conservation enhances long-range phase coherence, highlighting a mechanism used by superfluids and superconductors to gain phase stiffness.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Synthetic weather radar using hybrid quantum-classical machine learning

The availability of high-resolution weather radar images underpins effective forecasting and decision-making. In regions beyond traditional radar coverage, generative models have emerged as an important synthetic capability, fusing more ubiquitous data sources, such as satellite imagery and numerical weather models, into accurate radar-like products. Here, we demonstrate methods to augment conventional convolutional neural networks with quantum-assisted models for generative tasks in global synthetic weather radar. We show that quantum kernels can, in principle, perform fundamentally more complex tasks than classical learning machines on the relevant underlying data. Our results establish synthetic weather radar as an effective heuristic benchmark for quantum computing capabilities and set the stage for detailed quantum advantage benchmarking on a high-impact operationally relevant problem.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Optically-Heralded Entanglement of Superconducting Systems in Quantum Networks

Networking superconducting quantum computers is a longstanding challenge in quantum science. The typical approach has been to cascade transducers: converting to optical frequencies at the transmitter and to microwave frequencies at the receiver. However, the small microwave-optical coupling and added noise have proven formidable obstacles. Instead, we propose optical networking via heralding end-to-end entanglement with one detected photon and teleportation. In contrast to cascaded direct transduction, our scheme absorbs the low optical-microwave coupling efficiency into the heralding step, thus breaking the rate-fidelity trade-off. Moreover, this technique unifies and simplifies entanglement generation between superconducting devices and other physical modalities in quantum networks.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

TOF-SIMS Analysis of Decoherence Sources in Nb Superconducting Resonators

Superconducting qubits have emerged as a potentially foundational platform technology for addressing complex computational problems deemed intractable with classical computing. Despite recent advances enabling multiqubit designs that exhibit coherence lifetimes on the order of hundreds of $μ$s, material quality and interfacial structures continue to curb device performance. When niobium is deployed as the superconducting material, two-level system defects in the thin film and adjacent dielectric regions introduce stochastic noise and dissipate electromagnetic energy at the cryogenic operating temperatures. In this study, we utilize time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) to understand the role specific fabrication procedures play in introducing such dissipation mechanisms in these complex systems. We interrogated Nb thin films and transmon qubit structures fabricated by Rigetti Computing and at the National Institute of Standards and Technology through slight variations in the processing and vacuum conditions. We find that when Nb film is sputtered onto the Si substrate, oxide and silicide regions are generated at various interfaces. We also observe that impurity species such as niobium hydrides and carbides are incorporated within the niobium layer during the subsequent lithographic patterning steps. The formation of these resistive compounds likely impact the superconducting properties of the Nb thin film. Additionally, we observe the presence of halogen species distributed throughout the patterned thin films. We conclude by hypothesizing the source of such impurities in these structures in an effort to intelligently fabricate superconducting qubits and extend coherence times moving forward.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2021

Realization of arbitrary doubly-controlled quantum phase gates

Developing quantum computers for real-world applications requires understanding theoretical sources of quantum advantage and applying those insights to design more powerful machines. Toward that end, we introduce a high-fidelity gate set inspired by a proposal for near-term quantum advantage in optimization problems. By orchestrating coherent, multi-level control over three transmon qutrits, we synthesize a family of deterministic, continuous-angle quantum phase gates acting in the natural three-qubit computational basis (CCPHASE$(θ)$). We estimate the process fidelity for this scheme via Cycle Benchmarking of $\mathcal{F}=87.1\pm0.8\%$, higher than reference two-qubit gate decompositions. CCPHASE$(θ)$ is anticipated to have broad experimental implications, and we report a blueprint demonstration for solving a class of binary constraint satisfaction problems whose construction is consistent with a path to quantum advantage.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Practical Verification of Quantum Properties in Quantum Approximate Optimization Runs

In order to assess whether quantum resources can provide an advantage over classical computation, it is necessary to characterize and benchmark the non-classical properties of quantum algorithms in a practical manner. In this paper, we show that using measurements in no more than 3 out of the possible $3^N$ bases, one can not only reconstruct the single-qubit reduced density matrices and measure the ability to create coherent superpositions, but also possibly verify entanglement across all $N$ qubits participating in the algorithm. We introduce a family of generalized Bell-type observables for which we establish an upper bound to the expectation values in fully separable states by proving a generalization of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, which may serve of independent interest. We demonstrate that a subset of such observables can serve as entanglement witnesses for QAOA-MaxCut states, and further argue that they are especially well tailored for this purpose by defining and computing an entanglement potency metric on witnesses. A subset of these observables also certify, in a weaker sense, the entanglement in GHZ states, which share the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry of QAOA-MaxCut. The construction of such witnesses follows directly from the cost Hamiltonian to be optimized, and not through the standard technique of using the projector of the state being certified. It may thus provide insights to construct similar witnesses for other variational algorithms prevalent in the NISQ era. We demonstrate our ideas with proof-of-concept experiments on the Rigetti Aspen-9 chip for ansatze containing up to 24 qubits.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Entanglement Across Separate Silicon Dies in a Modular Superconducting Qubit Device

Assembling future large-scale quantum computers out of smaller, specialized modules promises to simplify a number of formidable science and engineering challenges. One of the primary challenges in developing a modular architecture is in engineering high fidelity, low-latency quantum interconnects between modules. Here we demonstrate a modular solid state architecture with deterministic inter-module coupling between four physically separate, interchangeable superconducting qubit integrated circuits, achieving two-qubit gate fidelities as high as 99.1$\pm0.5$\% and 98.3$\pm$0.3\% for iSWAP and CZ entangling gates, respectively. The quality of the inter-module entanglement is further confirmed by a demonstration of Bell-inequality violation for disjoint pairs of entangled qubits across the four separate silicon dies. Having proven out the fundamental building blocks, this work provides the technological foundations for a modular quantum processor: technology which will accelerate near-term experimental efforts and open up new paths to the fault-tolerant era for solid state qubit architectures.

quant-ph↗