arXiv subjects

Tiefu Li

Publications and source records attributed to Tiefu Li.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

QCORE: A Quantum-Control-Oriented Real-Time Execution Architecture with Extensible Closed-Loop Services and Shared AI Acceleration

Scalable quantum processors require control, readout, feedback, calibration, and error correction to coexist under bounded latency and shared-resource constraints, whereas existing platforms typically optimize only a subset of these capabilities. This article presents QCORE (Quantum-Control-Oriented Real-Time Execution), a QPU-side digital control reference architecture positioned between the Host and a platform-specific analog/mixed-signal front end. QCORE separates task management, shared resources, hard-real-time execution, and long-timescale services into four hardware partitions. A fast-result sideband closes same-round feedback, a Measurement Packet provides a traceable measurement and service interface, and a common service-control skeleton, Tile-local QEC, and versioned safe-point commit organize calibration, error correction, and long-term state updates. Transaction-level, event-driven, and quantum-behavioral models are used for evaluation. At a background load of 0.8, the $P_{99}$ latency of the shared Measurement Packet/Event feedback path is $(1.984\pm0.004)L_{\max}$. Closed-loop operation reduces the mean frequency error by $83.2\%\pm0.8\%$ and lowers the state-assignment error at maximum readout drift from $10.39\%\pm0.54\%$ to $5.37\%\pm0.29\%$. No unsafe acceptance or mixed-version observation is observed in 100,000 configuration transactions, and Tile-local QEC reduces modeled global-boundary demand and yields a $2.08\times$ capacity-normalized scaling estimate.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Dissipative acousto-mechanical parametric interface between high-overtone acoustics and flexural phonons

High-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonators (HBARs) promise advanced phononics, yet achieving nonlinearity remains challenging. We demonstrate a radiation-pressure-type parametric interaction between GHz HBARs and low-frequency flexural modes in a suspended silicon nitride membrane, where mechanical displacement modulates the external dissipation rate to enable dissipative acousto-mechanical coupling. Benefiting from the high quality factor, the system enters the resolved-sideband regime at room temperature, yielding acousto-mechanically induced transparency. We observe tunable Kerr nonlinearity and generate coherent HBAR frequency combs via two-tone driving. Notably, our dissipative coupling strength is 20 times larger than the dispersive coupling, the highest ratio among reported hybrid dissipative-dispersive coupling systems, resulting in the experimental observation of amplification in the reflection spectra under red-sideband driving. The ability to interface dense HBAR modes with a common mechanical resonator provides a scalable on-chip platform for multimode phononic information processing, with quantum phononics potentially achievable at sub-Kelvin temperatures.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

CO-QLink: Cryogenic Optical Link for Scalable Quantum Computing Systems and High-Performance Cryogenic Computing Systems

Cryogenic systems necessitate extensive data transmission between room-temperature and cryogenic environments, as well as within the cryogenic temperature domain. High-speed, low-power data transmission is pivotal to enabling the deployment of larger-scale cryogenic systems, including the scalable quantum computing systems and the high-performance cryogenic computing systems fully immersed in liquid nitrogen. In contrast to wireline and microwave links, optical communication links are emerging as a solution characterized by high data rates, high energy efficiency, low signal attenuation, absence of thermal conduction, and superior scalability. In this work, a 4K heat-insulated high-speed (56Gbps) low-power (1.6pJ/b) transceiver (TRX) that achieves a complete link between 4K systems and room temperature (RT) equipment is presented. Copackaged with a PIN photodiode (PD), the RX uses an inverter-based analog front-end and an analog half-rate clock data recovery loop. Connecting to a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM), the TX contains a voltage-mode driver with current-mode injection for low-power output-swing-boosting and 3-tap feed-forward equalization (FFE). This link has been demonstrated in the control and readout of a complete superconducting quantum computing system.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Superior Frequency Stability and Long-Lived State-Swapping in Cubic-SiC Mechanical Mode Pairs

The multimode cavity optomechanical system offers versatile applications including state transduction, coherent interconnection, and many-body simulations. In this study, we developed a cavity electromechanical system that integrates a 3C-SiC membrane and a rectangular superconducting cavity to observe the generation of nearly degenerate pairs of mechanical modes. Subsequently, we derive the expression for intrinsic frequency under nonuniform stress and find that this method supports a remarkably resolution for stress analysis in thin films. Experimentally, we perform collective fitting on the measured set of 57 mechanical modes, revealing deviations in biaxial non-uniform stress on the order of MPa. These degeneracy-broken mechanical modes exhibit exceptional quality factors as high as $10^8$ in a thermal bath of 10 mK. Furthermore, Allan deviation indicates that these modes exhibit extremely stable frequencies compared with different types of optomechanical devices. We then performed state-swapping between near-degenerate mode pairs, demonstrating the transfer efficiency exceeding 78\%, attributed to their exceptionally long lifetimes. This study paves the way for the design of compact quantum phononic devices featuring high-quality-factor mechanical multimode.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Cavity Optomechanical Probe of Gravity Between Massive Mechanical Oscillators

Exploring gravitational interactions between objects with small masses has become increasingly timely. Concurrently, oscillators with masses ranging between milligrams and grams in cavity optomechanical systems sparked interest for probing gravity, and even investigating gravity within macroscopic quantum systems. Here we present a measurement scheme for probing gravity in a microwave optomechanical setup that incorporates periodic gravitational modulation between the test mass and the driven source mass at the milligram scale. Optomechanically induced transparency (OMIT) can be utilized to sense the gravitational interactions between test masses and source masses. Specifically, the relative variation in the height of the OMIT peak, expressed as $|1 + re^{i\phi}|^2 - 1$, where $r$ represents the ratio of the amplitude of the gravitational driving force to the radiation pressure force of the probe tone, and $\phi$ denotes their phase difference, can reach up to 2.3\% under plausible experimental conditions. This work may facilitate cavity-optomechanical probing of gravitational coupling between milligram-scale mechanical oscillators, a mass regime where quantum and gravitational effects converge.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Gate-Compatible Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics in a Three-Dimensional Cavity Architecture

Semiconductor-based superconducting qubits offer a versatile platform for studying hybrid quantum devices in circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) architecture. Most of these cQED experiments utilize coplanar waveguides, where the incorporation of DC gate lines is straightforward. Here, we present a technique for probing gate-tunable hybrid devices using a three-dimensional (3D) microwave cavity. A recess is machined inside the cavity wall for the placement of devices and gate lines. We validate this design using a hybrid device based on an InAs-Al nanowire Josephson junction. The coupling between the device and the cavity is facilitated by a long superconducting strip, the antenna. The Josephson junction and the antenna together form a gatemon qubit. We further demonstrate the gate-tunable cavity shift and two-tone qubit spectroscopy. This technique could be used to probe various quantum devices and materials in a 3D cQED architecture that requires DC gate voltages.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Strong coupling between a single-photon and a two-photon Fock state

The realization of strong nonlinear coupling between single photons has been a long-standing goal in quantum optics and quantum information science, promising wide impact applications, such as all-optical deterministic quantum logic and single-photon frequency conversion. Here, we report an experimental observation of the strong coupling between a single-photon and a two-photon Fock state in an ultrastrongly-coupled circuit-QED system. This strong nonlinear interaction is realized by introducing a detuned flux qubit working as an effective coupler between two modes of a superconducting coplanar waveguide resonator. The ultrastrong light--matter interaction breaks the excitation number conservation, and an external flux bias breaks the parity conservation. The combined effect of the two enables the strong one--two-photon coupling. Quantum Rabi-like avoided crossing is resolved when tuning the two-photon resonance frequency of the first mode across the single-photon resonance frequency of the second mode. Within this new photonic regime, we observe the thresholdless second harmonic generation for a mean photon number below one. Our results represent a key step towards a new regime of quantum nonlinear optics, where individual photons can deterministically and coherently interact with each other in the absence of any stimulating fields.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Degeneracy-breaking and Long-lived Multimode Microwave Electromechanical Systems Enabled by Cubic Silicon-Carbide Membrane Crystals

Cubic silicon-carbide crystals (3C-SiC), known for their high thermal conductivity and in-plane stress, hold significant promise for the development of high-quality ($Q$) mechanical oscillators. We reveal degeneracy-breaking phenomena in 3C-phase crystalline silicon-carbide membrane and present high-$Q$ mechanical modes in pairs or clusters. The 3C-SiC material demonstrates excellent microwave compatibility with superconducting circuits. Thus, we can establish a coherent electromechanical interface, enabling precise control over 21 high-$Q$ mechanical modes from a single 3C-SiC square membrane. Benefiting from extremely high mechanical frequency stability, this interface enables tunable light slowing with group delays extending up to an impressive duration of \emph{an hour}. Coherent energy transfer between distinct mechanical modes are also presented. In this work, the studied 3C-SiC membrane crystal with their significant properties of multiple acoustic modes and high-quality factors, provide unique opportunities for the encoding, storage, and transmission of quantum information via bosonic phonon channels.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Probing the symmetry breaking of a light--matter system by an ancillary qubit

Hybrid quantum systems in the ultrastrong, and even more in the deep-strong, coupling regimes can exhibit exotic physical phenomena and promise new applications in quantum technologies. In these nonperturbative regimes, a qubit--resonator system has an entangled quantum vacuum with a nonzero average photon number in the resonator, where the photons are virtual and cannot be directly detected. The vacuum field, however, is able to induce the symmetry breaking of a dispersively coupled probe qubit. We experimentally observe the parity symmetry breaking of an ancillary Xmon artificial atom induced by the field of a lumped-element superconducting resonator deep-strongly coupled with a flux qubit. This result opens a way to experimentally explore the novel quantum-vacuum effects emerging in the deep-strong coupling regime.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Gatemon qubit based on a thin InAs-Al hybrid nanowire

We study a gate-tunable superconducting qubit (gatemon) based on a thin InAs-Al hybrid nanowire. Using a gate voltage to control its Josephson energy, the gatemon can reach the strong coupling regime to a microwave cavity. In the dispersive regime, we extract the energy relaxation time $T_1\sim$0.56 $μ$s and the dephasing time $T_2^* \sim$0.38 $μ$s. Since thin InAs-Al nanowires can have fewer or single sub-band occupation and recent transport experiment shows the existence of nearly quantized zero-bias conductance peaks, our result holds relevancy for detecting Majorana zero modes in thin InAs-Al nanowires using circuit quantum electrodynamics.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Parity-dependent unidirectional and chiral photon transfer in reversed-dissipation cavity optomechanics

Nonreciprocal elements, such as isolators and circulators, play an important role in classical and quantum information processing. Recently, strong nonreciprocal effects have been experimentally demonstrated in cavity optomechanical systems. In these approaches, the bandwidth of the nonreciprocal photon transmission is limited by the mechanical resonator linewidth, which is arguably much smaller than the linewidths of the cavity modes in most electromechanical or optomechanical devices. In this work, we demonstrate broadband nonreciprocal photon transmission in the \emph{reversed-dissipation} regime, where the mechanical mode with a large decay rate can be adiabatically eliminated while mediating anti-$\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric dissipative coupling with two kinds of phase factors. Adjusting the relative phases allows the observation of \emph{periodic} Riemann-sheet structures with distributed exceptional points (Eps). At the Eps, destructive quantum interference breaks both the $\mathcal{T}$- and $\mathcal{P}$-inversion symmetry, resulting in unidirectional and chiral photon transmissions. In the reversed-dissipation regime, the nonreciprocal bandwidth is no longer limited by the mechanical mode linewidth but is improved to the linewidth of the cavity resonance. Furthermore, we find that the direction of the unidirectional and chiral energy transfer could be reversed by changing the \emph{parity} of the Eps. Extending non-Hermitian couplings to a three-cavity model, the broken anti-$\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry allows us to observe high-order Eps, at which a parity-dependent chiral circulator is demonstrated. The driving-phase controlled periodical Riemann sheets allow observation of the parity-dependent unidirectional and chiral energy transfer and thus provide a useful cell for building up nonreciprocal array and realizing topological, e.g., isolators, circulators, or amplifiers.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

A Realizable GAS-based Quantum Algorithm for Traveling Salesman Problem

The paper proposes a quantum algorithm for the traveling salesman problem (TSP) based on the Grover Adaptive Search (GAS), which can be successfully executed on IBM's Qiskit library. Under the GAS framework, there are at least two fundamental difficulties that limit the application of quantum algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems. One difficulty is that the solutions given by the quantum algorithms may not be feasible. The other difficulty is that the number of qubits of current quantum computers is still very limited, and it cannot meet the minimum requirements for the number of qubits required by the algorithm. In response to the above difficulties, we designed and improved the Hamiltonian Cycle Detection (HCD) oracle based on mathematical theorems. It can automatically eliminate infeasible solutions during the execution of the algorithm. On the other hand, we design an anchor register strategy to save the usage of qubits. The strategy fully considers the reversibility requirement of quantum computing, overcoming the difficulty that the used qubits cannot be simply overwritten or released. As a result, we successfully implemented the numerical solution to TSP on IBM's Qiskit. For the seven-node TSP, we only need 31 qubits, and the success rate in obtaining the optimal solution is 86.71%.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Hybridized Frequency Combs in Multimode Cavity Electromechanical System

The cavity electromechanical devices with radiation-pressure-interaction induced Kerr-like nonlinearity are promising candidates to generate microwave frequency combs. We construct a silicon-nitride-membrane-based superconducting cavity electromechanical device and study two mechanical modes mediated synergistic frequency combs. Around the threshold of intracavity field instability, we firstly show independent frequency combs with tooth spacing equalling to each mechanical mode frequency. At the overlap boundaries of these two individual mechanical mode mediated instability thresholds, we observe hybridization of frequency combs based on the cavity field mediated indirect coupling between these two mechanical modes. The spectrum lines turn to be unequally spaced but can be recognized into combinations of the coexisting frequency combs. Beyond the boundary, the comb reverts to the single-mode case, and which mechanical mode frequency will the tooth spacing depend on the mode competition. Our work demonstrates mechanical mode competition enabled switchability of frequency comb tooth spacing and can be extended to other devices with multiple nonlinearities.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Optomechanical Anti-lasing with Infinite Group Delay at a Phase Singularity

Singularities that symbolize abrupt changes and exhibit extraordinary behavior are of broad interest. We experimentally study optomechanically induced singularities in a compound system consisting of a three-dimensional aluminum superconducting cavity and a metalized high-coherence silicon nitride membrane resonator. Mechanically-induced coherent perfect absorption and anti-lasing occur simultaneously under a critical optomechanical coupling strength. Meanwhile, the phase around the cavity resonance undergoes an abrupt $π$-phase transition, which further flips the phase slope in the frequency dependence. The observed infinite-discontinuity in the phase slope defines a singularity, at which the group velocity is dramatically changed. Around the singularity, an abrupt transition from an infinite group advance to delay is demonstrated by measuring a Gaussian-shaped waveform propagating. Our experiment may broaden the scope of realizing extremely long group delays by taking advantage of singularities.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Phase-controlled pathway interferences and switchable fast-slow light in a cavity-magnon polariton system

We study the phase controlled transmission properties in a compound system consisting of a 3D copper cavity and an yttrium iron garnet (YIG) sphere. By tuning the relative phase of the magnon pumping and cavity probe tones, constructive and destructive interferences occur periodically, which strongly modify both the cavity field transmission spectra and the group delay of light. Moreover, the tunable amplitude ratio between pump-probe tones allows us to further improve the signal absorption or amplification, accompanied by either significantly enhanced optical advance or delay. Both the phase and amplitude-ratio can be used to realize in-situ tunable and switchable fast-slow light. The tunable phase and amplitude-ratio lead to the zero reflection of the transmitted light and an abrupt fast-slow light transition. Our results confirm that direct magnon pumping through the coupling loops provides a versatile route to achieve controllable signal transmission, storage, and communication, which can be further expanded to the quantum regime, realizing coherent-state processing or quantum-limited precise measurements.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Photon-Dressed Bloch-Siegert Shift in an Ultrastrongly Coupled Circuit Quantum Electrodynamical System

A cavity quantum electrodynamical (QED) system beyond the strong-coupling regime is expected to exhibit intriguing quantum phenomena. Here we report a direct measurement of the photon-dressed qubit transition frequencies up to four photons by harnessing the same type of state transitions in an ultrastrongly coupled circuit-QED system realized by inductively coupling a superconducting flux qubit to a coplanar-waveguide resonator. This demonstrates a convincing observation of the photon-dressed Bloch-Siegert shift in the ultrastrongly coupled quantum system. Moreover, our results show that the photon-dressed Bloch-Siegert shift becomes more pronounced as the photon number increases, which is a characteristic of the quantum Rabi model.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Single-photon-driven high-order sideband transitions in an ultrastrongly coupled circuit quantum electrodynamics system

We report the experimental observation of high-order sideband transitions at the single-photon level in a quantum circuit system of a flux qubit ultrastrongly coupled to a coplanar waveguide resonator. With the coupling strength reaching 10% of the resonator's fundamental frequency, we obtain clear signatures of higher-order red and first-order blue-sideband transitions, which are mainly due to the ultrastrong Rabi coupling. Our observation advances the understanding of ultrastrongly-coupled systems and paves the way to study high-order processes in the quantum Rabi model at the single-photon level.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2013

Charge-SQUID and Tunable Phase-slip Flux Qubit

A phase-slip flux qubit, exactly dual to a charge qubit, is composed of a superconducting loop interrupted by a phase-slip junction. Here we propose a tunable phase-slip flux qubit by replacing the phase-slip junction with a charge-related superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) consisting of two phase-slip junctions connected in series with a superconducting island. This charge-SQUID acts as an effective phase-slip junction controlled by the applied gate voltage and can be used to tune the energy-level splitting of the qubit. Also, we show that a large inductance inserted in the loop can reduce the inductance energy and consequently suppress the dominating flux noise of the phase-slip flux qubit. This enhanced phase-slip flux qubit is exactly dual to a transmon qubit.

cond-mat.supr-con↗