Superconducting circuit with charge-parity protection: Theory

ORAL

Abstract

Superconducting qubits that encode quantum information over multiple local degrees of freedom should exhibit improved coherence times (protected qubits). However, the limitation of current fabrication techniques hinders their experimental realization. We propose an experimentally accessible prototype of a protected qubit. It resembles a transmon qubit, with its Josephson junction replaced by an element that exclusively permits tunneling of pairs of Cooper pairs. This renders the lowest two energy eigenstates nearly degenerate, owing to the conservation of Cooper pair number parity. Here, the operator that maps one ground state to the other can only be expressed as a linear combination of local degrees of freedom, providing a primitive form of protection. Numerical simulations of the energy spectrum, wavefunctions, and coherence times validate this analysis.

*Work supported by: ARO, ONR, AFOSR, and YINQE

Presenters

  • Xu Xiao

    • Applied Physics, Yale University

Authors

  • Xu Xiao

    • Applied Physics, Yale University
  • Clarke Smith

    • Applied Physics, Yale University
  • Angela Kou

    • Applied Physics, Yale University
    • Yale Univ
  • Ioannis Tsioutsios

    • Applied Physics, Yale University
  • Uri Vool

    • Physics, Harvard University
    • Applied Physics, Yale University
    • Yale Univ
  • Jayameenakshi Venkatraman

    • Applied Physics, Yale University
    • Department of Applied Physics, Yale Univ
  • Kyle Serniak

    • Applied Physics, Yale University
  • Shyam Shankar

    • Applied Physics, Yale University
    • Department of Applied Physics, Yale University
    • Department of Applied Physics, Yale Univ
    • Yale Univ
  • Michel Devoret

    • Yale University
    • Applied Physics, Yale University
    • Department of Applied Physics, Yale University
    • Applied Physics, Yale Univ
    • Physics and Applied Physics, Yale University
    • Yale Univ
    • Dept. of Applied Physics, Yale University
    • Department of Applied Physics, Yale Univ