arXiv subjects

Valla Fatemi

Publications and source records attributed to Valla Fatemi.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2026

Low-loss Nb on Si superconducting resonators from a dual-use spintronics deposition chamber and with acid-free post-processing

Magnetic impurities are known to degrade superconductivity. For this reason, physical vapor deposition chambers that have previously been used for magnetic materials have generally been avoided for making high-quality superconducting resonator devices. In this article, we show by example that such chambers can be used for this purpose; with Nb films sputtered in a chamber that continues to be used for magnetic materials, we demonstrate compact (\SI{3}{\micro\meter} gap) coplanar waveguide resonators with low-power internal quality factors near one million. We achieve this using a resist strip bath with no post-fabrication acid treatment, which results in performance comparable to previous strip baths with acid treatments. We also find evidence that this improved resist strip bath provides a better surface chemical template for post-fabrication hydrogen fluoride processing. These results are consistent across three Si substrate preparation methods, including a \SI{700}{\celsius} anneal. These results will inform nanofabrication for other superconducting materials and the integration of magnetic materials for hybrid systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Andreev spin qubits bound to Josephson vortices in spin-orbit coupled planar Josephson junctions

We propose a variant of Andreev spin qubits (ASQs) defined in planar Josephson junctions based on spin-orbit coupled two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) in a weak out-of-plane magnetic field. The magnetic field induces a linear phase gradient across the junction, generating Josephson vortices that can host low-energy Andreev bound states (ABSs). We show that, in certain parameter regimes, the combined effect of the phase gradient and spin-orbit coupling stabilizes an odd-fermion parity ground state, where a single Josephson vortex binds a spinful low-energy degree of freedom that is energetically separated from the other ABSs. This low-energy degree of freedom can be exploited to define a special type of ASQ, which we dub the vortex spin qubit (VSQ). We show that single-qubit gates for VSQs can be performed via flux driving, while readout can be achieved by adapting standard circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) techniques developed for conventional ASQs. We further outline how an entangling two-qubit gate can be performed using an ac current drive. We argue that VSQs offer prospects for a substantial reduction in device complexity and hardware overhead compared to conventional ASQ implementations, while preserving key advantages such as supercurrent-based readout, single-qubit gates, and long-range two-qubit gates.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Spectroscopy and Coherent Control of Two-Level System Defect Ensembles Using a Broadband 3D Waveguide

Defects in solid-state materials play a central role in determining coherence, stability, and performance in quantum technologies. Although narrowband techniques can probe specific resonances with high precision, a broadband spectroscopic approach captures the full spectrum of defect properties and dynamics. Two-level system (TLS) defects in amorphous dielectrics are a particularly important example because they are major sources of decoherence and energy loss in superconducting quantum devices. However, accessing and characterizing their collective dynamics remains far more challenging than probing individual TLS defects. Building on our previously developed Broadband Cryogenic Transient Dielectric Spectroscopy (BCTDS) technique, we study the coherent control and time-resolved dynamics of TLS defect ensembles over a wide frequency range of 3-5 GHz without requiring full device fabrication, revealing quantum interference effects, memory-dependent dynamics, and dressed-state evolution within the TLS defect bath. The spectral response reveals distinct V-shaped structures corresponding to the bare eigenmode frequencies. Using these features, we extract a TLS defect spectral density of 84 GHz^-1 for a silicon sample, across a 4.1-4.6 GHz span. Furthermore, we systematically investigate amplitude- and phase-controlled interference fringes for multiple temperatures and inter-pulse delays, providing direct evidence of coherent dynamics and control. A driven minimal spin model with dipole-dipole interactions that qualitatively capture the observed behavior is presented. Our results establish BCTDS as a versatile platform for broadband defect spectroscopy, offering new capabilities for diagnosing and mitigating sources of decoherence, engineering many-body dynamics, and exploring non-equilibrium phenomena in disordered quantum systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

A Mathematical Structure for Amplitude-Mixing Error-Transparent Gates for Binomial Codes

Bosonic encodings of quantum information offer hardware-efficient, noise-biased approaches to quantum error correction relative to qubit register encodings. Implementations have focused in particular on error correction of stored, idle quantum information, whereas quantum algorithms are likely to desire high duty cycles of active control. Error-transparent operations are one way to preserve error rates during operations, but, to the best of our knowledge, only phase gates have so far been given an explicitly error-transparent formulation for binomial encodings. Here, we introduce the concept of 'parity nested' operations, and show how these operations can be designed to achieve continuous amplitude-mixing logical gates for binomial encodings that are fully error-transparent to the photon loss channel. For a binomial encoding that protects against l photon losses, the construction requires $\lfloor$l/2$\rfloor$ + 1 orders of generalized squeezing in the parity nested operation to fully preserve this protection. We further show that error-transparency to all the correctable photon jumps, but not the no-jump errors, can be achieved with just a single order of squeezing. Finally, we comment on possible approaches to experimental realization of this concept.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Low barrier ZrO$_x$-based Josephson junctions

The Josephson junction is a crucial element in superconducting devices, and niobium is a promising candidate for the superconducting material due to its large energy gap relative to aluminum. AlO$_x$ has long been regarded as the highest quality oxide tunnel barrier and is often used in niobium-based junctions. Here we propose ZrO$_x$ as an alternative tunnel barrier material for Nb electrodes. We theoretically estimate that zirconium oxide has excellent oxygen retention properties and experimentally verify that there is no significant oxygen diffusion leading to NbO$_x$ formation in the adjacent Nb electrode. We develop a top-down, subtractive fabrication process for Nb/Zr-ZrO$_x$/Nb Josephson junctions, which enables scalability and large-scale production of superconducting electronics. Using cross sectional scanning transmission electron microscopy, we experimentally find that depending on the Zr thickness, ZrO$_x$ tunnel barriers can be fully crystalline with chemically abrupt interfaces with niobium. Further analysis using electron energy loss spectroscopy reveals that ZrO$_x$ corresponds to tetragonal ZrO$_2$. Room temperature characterization of fabricated junctions using Simmons' model shows that ZrO$_2$ exhibits a low tunnel barrier height, which is promising in merged-element transmon applications. Low temperature transport measurements reveal sub-gap structure, while the low-voltage sub-gap resistance remains in the megaohm range.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2025

Fast readout of quantum dot spin qubits via Andreev spins

Spin qubits in semiconducting quantum dots are currently limited by slow readout processes, which are orders of magnitude slower than gate operations. In contrast, Andreev spin qubits benefit from fast measurement schemes enabled by the large resonator couplings of superconducting qubits but suffer from reduced coherence during qubit operations. Here, we propose fast and high-fidelity measurement protocols based on an electrically-tunable coupling between quantum dot and Andreev spin qubits. In realistic devices, this coupling can be made sufficiently strong to enable high-fidelity readout well below microseconds, potentially enabling mid-circuit measurements. Crucially, the electrical tunability of our coupler permits to switch it off during idle periods, minimizing crosstalk and measurement back-action. Our approach is fully compatible with germanium-based devices and paves the way for scalable quantum computing architectures by leveraging the advantages of heterogeneous qubit implementations.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Full characterization of measurement-induced transitions of a superconducting qubit

Repeated quantum non-demolition measurement is a cornerstone of quantum error correction protocols. In superconducting qubits, the speed of dispersive state readout can be enhanced by increasing the power of the readout tone. However, such an increase has been found to result in additional qubit state transitions that violate the desired quantum non-demolition character of the measurement. Recently, the readout of a transmon superconducting qubit was improved by using a tone with frequency much larger than the qubit frequency. Here, we experimentally identify the mechanisms of readout-induced transitions in this regime. In the dominant mechanism, the energy of an incoming readout photon is partially absorbed by the transmon and partially returned to the transmission line as a photon with lower frequency. Other mechanisms involve the excitation of unwanted package modes, decay via material defects, and, at higher qubit frequencies, the activation of undesired resonances in the transmon spectrum. Our work provides a comprehensive characterization of superconducting qubit state transitions caused by a strong drive.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Chiral adiabatic transmission protected by Fermi surface topology

We demonstrate that Andreev modes that propagate along a transparent Josephson junction have a perfect transmission at the point where three junctions meet. The chirality and the number of quantized transmission channels is determined by the topology of the Fermi surface and the vorticity of the superconducting phase differences at the trijunction. We explain this chiral adiabatic transmission (CAT) as a consequence of the adiabatic evolution of the scattering modes both in momentum and real space. The dispersion relation of the junction then separates the scattering trajectories by introducing inaccessible regions of phase space. We expect that CAT is observable in nonlocal conductance and thermal transport measurements. Furthermore, because it does not rely on particle-hole symmetry, CAT is also possible to observe directly in metamaterials.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Kramers-protected hardware-efficient error correction with Andreev spin qubits

We propose an architecture for bit-flip error correction of Andreev spins that is protected by Kramers' degeneracy. Specifically, we show that a coupling network of linear inductors and Andreev spin qubits results in a static Hamiltonian composed of the stabilizers of a bit-flip code. The electrodynamics of the many-body spin states also respect these stabilizers, and we show how reflectometry off a single coupled resonator can thereby accomplish their projective measurement. We further show how circuit-mediated spin couplings enable error correction operations and a complete set of single- and two-module logical quantum gates. The concept, which we dub the Ising molecule qubit (or Isene), is experimentally feasible and provides a path for compact noise-biased qubits.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Growth and characterization of single crystal cubic TaN and hexagonal Ta$_2$N films on c-plane Sapphire

Two single crystal phases of tantalum nitride were stabilized on c-plane sapphire using molecular beam epitaxy. The phases were identified to be $δ$-TaN with a rocksalt cubic structure and $γ$-Ta$_2$N with a hexagonal structure. Atomic force microscopy scans revealed smooth surfaces for both the films with root mean square roughnesses less than 0.3 nm. Phase-purity of these films was determined by x-ray diffraction. Raman spectrum of the phase-pure $δ$-TaN and $γ$-Ta$_2$N obtained will serve as a future reference to determine phase-purity of tantalum nitride films. Further, the room-temperature and low-temperature electronic transport measurements indicated that both of these phases are metallic at room temperature with resistivities of 586.2 $μΩ$-cm for the 30 nm $δ$-TaN film and 75.5 $μΩ$-cm for the 38 nm $γ$-Ta$_2$N film and become superconducting below 3.6 K and 0.48 K respectively. The superconducting transition temperature reduces with applied magnetic field as expected. Ginzburg-Landau fitting revealed a 0 K critical magnetic field and coherence length of 18 T and 4.2 nm for the 30 nm $δ$-TaN film and 96 mT and 59 nm for the 38 nm $γ$-Ta$_2$N film. These tantalum nitride films are of high interest for superconducting resonators and qubits.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2025

Nonlinearity of transparent SNS weak links decreases sharply with length

Superconductor-normal material-superconductor (SNS) junctions are being integrated into microwave circuits for fundamental and applied research goals. The short junction limit is a common simplifying assumption for experiments with SNS junctions, but this limit constrains how small the nonlinearity of the microwave circuit can be. Here, we show that a finite length of the weak link strongly suppresses the nonlinearity compared to its zero-length limit -- the suppression can be up to a factor of ten even when the length remains shorter than the induced coherence length. We tie this behavior to the nonanalytic dependence of nonlinearity on length, which the critical current does not exhibit. Further, we identify additional experimentally observable consequences of nonzero length, and we conjecture that anharmonicity is bounded between zero and a maximally negative value for any non-interacting Josephson junction in the presence of time-reversal symmetry. We promote SNS junction length as a useful parameter for designing weakly nonlinear microwave circuits.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2025

Synthetic high angular momentum spin dynamics in a microwave oscillator

Spins and oscillators are foundational to much of physics and applied sciences. For quantum information, a spin 1/2 exemplifies the most basic unit, a qubit. High angular momentum spins (HAMSs) and harmonic oscillators provide multi-level manifolds (e.g., qudits) which have the potential for hardware-efficient protected encodings of quantum information and simulation of many-body quantum systems. In this work, we demonstrate a new quantum control protocol that conceptually merges these disparate hardware platforms. Namely, we show how to modify a harmonic oscillator on-demand to implement a continuous range of generators associated to resonant driving of a harmonic qudit, which we can interpret as accomplishing linear and nonlinear control over a harmonic HAMS degree of freedom. The spin-like dynamics are verified by demonstration of linear spin coherent (SU(2)) rotations, nonlinear spin control, and comparison to other manifolds like simply-truncated oscillators. Our scheme allows the first universal control of such a harmonic qudit encoding: we use linear operations to accomplish four logical gates, and further show that nonlinear harmonicity-preserving operations complete the logical gate set. Our results show how motion on a closed Hilbert space can be useful for quantum information processing and opens the door to superconducting circuit simulations of higher angular momentum quantum magnetism.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Andreev spin relaxation time in a shadow-evaporated InAs weak link

Andreev spin qubits are a new qubit platform that merges superconductivity with semiconductor physics. The mechanisms dominating observed energy relaxation remain unidentified. We report here on three steps taken to address these questions in an InAs nanowire weak link. First, we designed a microwave readout circuit tuned to be directly sensitive to the spin-dependent inductance of the weak link so that higher orbital states are not necessary for readout -- this resulted in larger windows in parameter space in which the spin state properties can be probed. Second, we implemented a successful gap-engineering strategy to mitigate quasiparticle poisoning. Third, the weak link was fabricated by \textit{in situ} shadow evaporation, which has been shown to improve atomic-scale disorder. We show how our design allows characterization of the spin stability and coherence over the full range of magnetic flux and gate voltage of an odd parity bias point. The spin relaxation and dephasing rates are comparable with the best devices previously reported, suggestive that surface atomic-scale disorder and QP poisoning are not linked to spin relaxation in InAs nanowires. Our design strategies are transferrable to novel materials platforms for Andreev qubits such as germanium and carbon.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

High-frequency readout free from transmon multi-excitation resonances

Quantum computation will rely on quantum error correction to counteract decoherence. Successfully implementing an error correction protocol requires the fidelity of qubit operations to be well-above error correction thresholds. In superconducting quantum computers, measurement of the qubit state remains the lowest-fidelity operation. For the transmon, a prototypical superconducting qubit, measurement is carried out by scattering a microwave tone off the qubit. Conventionally, the frequency of this tone is of the same order as the transmon frequency. The measurement fidelity in this approach is limited by multi-excitation resonances in the transmon spectrum which are activated at high readout power. These resonances excite the qubit outside of the computational basis, violating the desired quantum non-demolition character of the measurement. Here, we find that strongly detuning the readout frequency from that of the transmon exponentially suppresses the strength of spurious multi-excitation resonances. By increasing the readout frequency up to twelve times the transmon frequency, we achieve a quantum non-demolition measurement fidelity of 99.93% with a residual probability of leakage to non-computational states of only 0.02%.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Molecular beam epitaxy growth of superconducting tantalum germanide

Developing new material platforms for use in superconductor-semiconductor hybrid structures is desirable due to limitations caused by intrinsic microwave losses present in commonly used III/V material systems. With the recent reports on tantalum superconducting qubits that show improvements over the Nb and Al counterparts, exploring Ta as an alternative superconductor in hybrid material systems is promising. Here, we study the growth of Ta on semiconducting Ge (001) substrates grown via molecular beam epitaxy. We show that at a growth temperature of 400$^{\circ}$C the Ta diffuses into the Ge matrix in a self-limiting nature resulting in smooth and abrupt surfaces and interfaces with roughness on the order of 3-7 Å as measured by atomic force microscopy and x-ray reflectivity. The films are found to be a mixture of Ta$_{5}$Ge$_{3}$ and TaGe$_{2}$ binary alloys and form a native oxide that seems to form a sharp interface with the underlying film. These films are superconducting with a $T_{C}\sim 1.8-2$K and $H_{C}^{\perp} \sim 1.88T$, $H_{C}^{\parallel} \sim 5.1T$. These results show this tantalum germanide film to be promising for future superconducting quantum information platforms.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Microwave signal processing using an analog quantum reservoir computer

Quantum reservoir computing (QRC) has been proposed as a paradigm for performing machine learning with quantum processors where the training is efficient in the number of required runs of the quantum processor and takes place in the classical domain, avoiding the issue of barren plateaus in parameterized-circuit quantum neural networks. It is natural to consider using a quantum processor based on superconducting circuits to classify microwave signals that are analog -- continuous in time. However, while theoretical proposals of analog QRC exist, to date QRC has been implemented using circuit-model quantum systems -- imposing a discretization of the incoming signal in time, with each time point input by executing a gate operation. In this paper we show how a quantum superconducting circuit comprising an oscillator coupled to a qubit can be used as an analog quantum reservoir for a variety of classification tasks, achieving high accuracy on all of them. Our quantum system was operated without artificially discretizing the input data, directly taking in microwave signals. Our work does not attempt to address the question of whether QRCs could provide a quantum computational advantage in classifying pre-recorded classical signals. However, beyond illustrating that sophisticated tasks can be performed with a modest-size quantum system and inexpensive training, our work opens up the possibility of achieving a different kind of advantage than a purely computational advantage: superconducting circuits can act as extremely sensitive detectors of microwave photons; our work demonstrates processing of ultra-low-power microwave signals in our superconducting circuit, and by combining sensitive detection with QRC processing within the same system, one could achieve a quantum sensing-computational advantage, i.e., an advantage in the overall analysis of microwave signals comprising just a few photons.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Josephson tunnel junction arrays and Andreev weak links: linked by a single energy-phase relation

Josephson elements are cornerstones of cryogenic classical and quantum superconducting technology, owing to their nonlinearity. Two important types of Josephson elements are often considered distinct: the tunnel junction (superconductor-insulator-superconductor, SIS) and the Andreev weak link (superconductor-normal-superconductor, SNS) referring to any non-superconducting and non-insulating central region. SNS junctions and SIS junctions have appeared in related technological and fundamental science contexts over the last decade, such as in the design of protected qubit concepts. In this perspective article, we review correspondences between SISIS junctions and SNS junctions in limiting regimes, in which a single energy-phase relationship describes both systems. We show how this insight helps to connect recent bodies of theoretical and experimental work in both systems, and conclude by describing a few important differences.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Coexistence of nonequilibrium density and equilibrium energy distribution of quasiparticles in a superconducting qubit

The density of quasiparticles typically observed in superconducting qubits exceeds the value expected in equilibrium by many orders of magnitude. Can this out-of-equilibrium quasiparticle density still possess an energy distribution in equilibrium with the phonon bath? Here, we answer this question affirmatively by measuring the thermal activation of charge-parity switching in a transmon qubit with a difference in superconducting gap on the two sides of the Josephson junction. We then demonstrate how the gap asymmetry of the device can be exploited to manipulate its parity.

quant-ph↗