19 research outputs found
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
Superconducting detector dynamics studied by quantum pump-probe spectroscopy
We explore the dynamics of superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs) on the picosecond time-scale using a correlated photon-pair source based on spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC), corresponding to a pump-probe experiment at the single-photon level. We show that the detector can operate in a regime where the two-photon detection probability is orders of magnitude larger than the single-photon detection probability. The characteristic relaxation time-scale of the out-of-equilibrium hot-spot is found to be ? 15?ps. Our measurement technique is an effective tool to study fast two-photon processes, without requiring a power-dependence measurements to determine the number of photons involved.Quantum NanoscienceApplied Science
Shaped pulses for transient compensation in quantum-limited electron spin resonance spectroscopy
International audienceIn high sensitivity inductive electron spin resonance spectroscopy, superconducting microwave resonators with large quality factors are employed. While they enhance the sensitivity, they also distort considerably the shape of the applied rectangular microwave control pulses, which limits the degree of control over the spin ensemble. Here, we employ shaped microwave pulses compensating the signal distortion to drive the spins faster than the resonator bandwidth. This translates into a shorter echo, with enhanced signal-to-noise ratio. The shaped pulses are also useful to minimize the dead-time of our spectrometer, which allows to reduce the wait time between successive drive pulses