Dephasing of a Superconducting Flux Qubit

Physical Review B, 2003

Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences, 2007

Physical review letters, 2004

Although Josephson junction qubits show great promise for quantum computing, the origin of dominant decoherence mechanisms remains unknown. We report Rabi oscillations for an improved phase qubit, and show that their "coherence amplitude" is significantly degraded by spurious microwave resonators. These resonators arise from changes in the junction critical current produced by two-level states in the tunnel barrier. The discovery of these high frequency resonators impacts the future of all Josephson qubits as well as existing Josephson technologies. We predict that removing or reducing these resonators through materials research will improve the coherence of all Josephson qubits.

2004

Although Josephson junction qubits show great promise for quantum computing, the origin of dominant decoherence mechanisms remains unknown. We report Rabi oscillations for an improved phase qubit, and show that their coherence amplitude is significantly degraded by spurious microwave resonators. These resonators arise from changes in the junction critical current produced by two-level states in the tunnel barrier. The discovery of these high frequency resonators impacts the future of all Josephson qubits as well as existing Josephson technologies. We predict that removing or reducing these resonators through materials research will improve the coherence of all Josephson qubits.

Physical Review B, 2017

The sensitivity of superconducting qubits allows for spectroscopy and coherence measurements on individual two-level systems present in the disordered tunnel barrier of an Al/AlOx/Al Josephson junction. We report experimental evidence for the decoherence of two-level systems by Bogoliubov quasiparticles leaking into the insulating AlOx barrier. We control the density of quasiparticles in the junction electrodes either by the sample temperature or by injecting them using an on-chip dc-SQUID driven to its resistive state. The decoherence rates were measured by observing the two-level system's quantum state evolving under application of resonant microwave pulses and were found to increase linearly with quasiparticle density, in agreement with theory. This interaction with electronic states provides a noise and decoherence mechanism that is relevant for various microfabricated devices such as qubits, single-electron transistors, and field-effect transistors. The presented experiments also offer a possibility to determine the location of the probed two-level systems across the tunnel barrier, providing clues about the fabrication step in which they emerge.

Physical review letters, 2004

We have detected coherent quantum oscillations between Josephson phase qubits and critical-current fluctuators by implementing a new state readout technique that is an order of magnitude faster than previous methods. These results reveal a new aspect of the quantum behavior of Josephson junctions, and they demonstrate the means to measure two-qubit interactions in the time domain. The junctionfluctuator interaction also points to a possible mechanism for decoherence and reduced fidelity in superconducting qubits.

2003

A high degree of quantum coherence is a crucial requirement for the implementation of quantum logic devices. Solid state nanodevices seem particularly promising from the point of view of integrability and flexibility in the design. However decoherence is a serious limitation, due to the presence of many types low energy excitations in the ``internal'' environment and of ``external'' sources due to the control circuitery. Here we study both kind of dephasing in a special implementation, the charge Josephson qubit, however many of our results are applicable to a large class of solid state qubits. This is the case of 1/f noise for which we introduce and study a model of an environment of bistable fluctuatiors. External sources of noise are analized in terms of a suitable harmonic oscillator environment and the explicit mapping on the spin boson model is presented. We perform a detailed investigation of various computation procedures (single shot measurements, repeated measurements) and discuss the problem of the information needed to characterize the effect of the environment. For a fluctuator environment with 1/f spectrum memory effects turn out to be important. Although in general information beyond the power spectrum is needed, in many situations this results in the knowledge of only one more microscopic parameter of the environment. This allows to determine which degrees of freedom of the environment are effective sources of decoherence in each different physical situation considered.

2005

In the end I thank my Parents and my uncle Bruno for the never-ending support. To my parents and grandparents.

Reviews of Modern Physics, 2001

Chemical Physics, 2001

We investigate the decoherence and dephasing of two coupled Josephson qubits. With the interaction between the qubits being generated by current-current correlations, two different situations in which the qubits are coupled to the same bath, or to two independent baths, are considered. Upon focussing on dissipation being caused by the fluctuations of voltage sources, the relaxation and dephasing rates are explicitly evaluated. Analytical and numerical results for the coupled qubits dynamics are provided.