18 research outputs found
Deterministic protocol for mapping a qubit to coherent state superpositions in a cavity
We introduce a new gate that transfers an arbitrary state of a qubit into a
superposition of two quasi-orthogonal coherent states of a cavity mode, with
opposite phases. This qcMAP gate is based on conditional qubit and cavity
operations exploiting the energy level dispersive shifts, in the regime where
they are much stronger than the cavity and qubit linewidths. The generation of
multi-component superpositions of quasi-orthogonal coherent states, non-local
entangled states of two resonators and multi-qubit GHZ states can be
efficiently achieved by this gate
Hardware-efficient autonomous quantum error correction
We propose a new method to autonomously correct for errors of a logical qubit
induced by energy relaxation. This scheme encodes the logical qubit as a
multi-component superposition of coherent states in a harmonic oscillator, more
specifically a cavity mode. The sequences of encoding, decoding and correction
operations employ the non-linearity provided by a single physical qubit coupled
to the cavity. We layout in detail how to implement these operations in a
practical system. This proposal directly addresses the task of building a
hardware-efficient and technically realizable quantum memory.Comment: 12 pages,6 figure
Demonstrating Quantum Error Correction that Extends the Lifetime of Quantum Information
The remarkable discovery of Quantum Error Correction (QEC), which can
overcome the errors experienced by a bit of quantum information (qubit), was a
critical advance that gives hope for eventually realizing practical quantum
computers. In principle, a system that implements QEC can actually pass a
"break-even" point and preserve quantum information for longer than the
lifetime of its constituent parts. Reaching the break-even point, however, has
thus far remained an outstanding and challenging goal. Several previous works
have demonstrated elements of QEC in NMR, ions, nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers,
photons, and superconducting transmons. However, these works primarily
illustrate the signatures or scaling properties of QEC codes rather than test
the capacity of the system to extend the lifetime of quantum information over
time. Here we demonstrate a QEC system that reaches the break-even point by
suppressing the natural errors due to energy loss for a qubit logically encoded
in superpositions of coherent states, or cat states of a superconducting
resonator. Moreover, the experiment implements a full QEC protocol by using
real-time feedback to encode, monitor naturally occurring errors, decode, and
correct. As measured by full process tomography, the enhanced lifetime of the
encoded information is 320 microseconds without any post-selection. This is 20
times greater than that of the system's transmon, over twice as long as an
uncorrected logical encoding, and 10% longer than the highest quality element
of the system (the resonator's 0, 1 Fock states). Our results illustrate the
power of novel, hardware efficient qubit encodings over traditional QEC
schemes. Furthermore, they advance the field of experimental error correction
from confirming the basic concepts to exploring the metrics that drive system
performance and the challenges in implementing a fault-tolerant system
Confining the state of light to a quantum manifold by engineered two-photon loss
Physical systems usually exhibit quantum behavior, such as superpositions and
entanglement, only when they are sufficiently decoupled from a lossy
environment. Paradoxically, a specially engineered interaction with the
environment can become a resource for the generation and protection of quantum
states. This notion can be generalized to the confinement of a system into a
manifold of quantum states, consisting of all coherent superpositions of
multiple stable steady states. We have experimentally confined the state of a
harmonic oscillator to the quantum manifold spanned by two coherent states of
opposite phases. In particular, we have observed a Schrodinger cat state
spontaneously squeeze out of vacuum, before decaying into a classical mixture.
This was accomplished by designing a superconducting microwave resonator whose
coupling to a cold bath is dominated by photon pair exchange. This experiment
opens new avenues in the fields of nonlinear quantum optics and quantum
information, where systems with multi-dimensional steady state manifolds can be
used as error corrected logical qubits
Deterministically encoding quantum information using 100-photon Schrödinger cat states
International audienceIn contrast to a single quantum bit, an oscillator can store multiple excitations and coherences provided one has the ability to generate and manipulate complex multiphoton states. We demonstrate multiphoton control by using a superconducting transmon qubit coupled to a waveguide cavity resonator with a highly ideal off-resonant coupling. This dispersive interaction is much greater than decoherence rates and higher-order nonlinearities to allow simultaneous manipulation of hundreds of photons. With a tool set of conditional qubit-photon logic, we mapped an arbitrary qubit state to a superposition of coherent states, known as a "cat state." We created cat states as large as 111 photons and extended this protocol to create superpositions of up to four coherent states. This control creates a powerful interface between discrete and continuous variable quantum computation and could enable applications in metrology and quantum information processing