Coherent defects in superconducting circuits [Elektronische Ressource] / von Clemens Müller

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• Physik

Informations

• Publié par: karlsruher_institut_fur_technologie
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 25
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Institut für Theorie der Kondensierten Materie
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Coherent Defects in
Superconducting Circuits
Zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines
DOKTORS DER NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN
von der Fakultät für Physik des
Karlsruher Instituts für Technologie
genehmigte
Dissertation
von
Dipl. Phys. Clemens Müller
aus Rottweil
Tag der mündl. Prüfung: 27. Mai 2011
Referent: Prof. Dr. Alexander Shnirman
Korreferent: Prof. Dr. Alexey V. UstinovTo my motherIntroduction
During the last two decades, research into devices and architectures intended for
quantum computation has strongly improved our understanding of the fundamental
processes in quantum mechanics. Especially in solid-state system, great progress has
been made in the understanding and characterization of the interaction of quantum
systems with their environment. This interaction leads to decoherence in the time-
evolution of the state of a quantum system and is present in all solid-state devices.
However, not all of these effects are fully understood yet.
One such open problem is connected with the observation of coherent defect states
in superconducting circuits. These defects manifest themselves as anti-crossings in
spectroscopic data, illustrating their high degree of coherence and strong interactions
with the underlying circuit. It can be shown that they are genuine two-level systems
and reside most probably inside the circuits Josephson junctions. These two-level
states (TLS) are in general detrimental to the operation of the circuits, since they
open additional decoherence channels and, due to their strong interaction with the
circuit, modify its dynamics significantly. On the other hand they might prove useful
for quantum computation tasks themselves, as their coherence time often exceeds the
fabricated artificial qubits by more than one order of magnitude. Their microscopic
origin remains unclear. Many different possibilities have been proposed, but no
definite answer has been reached. Also, their possible connection to the ubiquitous
1/f-noise in solid-state systems, thought to stem from ensembles of incoherent TLS,
is unclear.
In this thesis, we show a study of the effects of coherent and incoherent TLS on the
operation of superconducting circuits. One goal was the understanding of the effect
such TLS have on the coherence properties of the circuits. We developed theory
describing this interaction in all relevant parameter regimes. The second goal was
to reach a better understanding of their microscopic nature and the nature of their
interaction with the circuit in order to either reduce the number of TLS already
in fabrication or utilize them directly for quantum manipulation. We focus mostly
on TLS in superconducting phase qubits, since they are most often observed in
these circuits. We were able to put strong constraints on several microscopic models
for TLS, which marks a large step forward towards understanding their nature.
Additionally we developed a method to directly manipulate the state of individual
TLS, which can be used to probe their quantum mechanical properties directly.
In most of this work, we have greatly profited from a very fruitful collaboration
with the experimental group of Prof. Alexey V. Ustinov at KIT. We will show a
great variety of experimental data that has been measured in this group, and with-
out which, this thesis would not have been possible in this form.
vIntroduction
This thesis is divided into five chapters:
We start with a motivation, where we introduce the physics of two-level defects
and explain their general role in the modeling of decoherence. We then go on to
describe coherent defects, as they are often found in superconducting circuits, and
shortly present several possible microscopic models.
Chapter one intends to give an introduction into the general theoretical back-
ground. The superconducting phase qubit is described in detail and its Hamiltonian
derived from the circuit diagram. A short overview on the treatment of decoherence
- the interaction with an environment - in quantum systems is provided. We then
introduce Floquet theory and how we can use it to model driven systems including
dissipation. As an aside from the thesis’ main theme, we then establish the notion
of geometric quantum computation using non-abelian holonomies, with the aim of
realizing them in superconducting systems.
The second chapter deals with the identification of the microscopic origin of coher-
ent TLS using spectroscopic data. We first show the experimental data and identify
the underlying physical processes. This data is then used for a high precision com-
parison with several existing microscopic models leading to severe constraints on the
parameters of the models.
The following chapter three develops a method to directly manipulate the state of
individual TLS. We show results from an experiment demonstrating this control to
investigate the coherence of two single TLS and try to speculate on some microscopic
explanation of the data.
In the fourth chapter, we focus on the description of interaction effects when a
qubit is interacting with additional two-level quantum systems. Here we treat the
two cases of weak and strong qubit-TLS coupling separately. We characterize the
interaction in terms of effective decoherence rates and also treat ensemble effects,
arising when the qubit is resonant with several TLS. This gives us a starting point
to briefly discuss the collective physics of quantum meta-materials formed e.g., by
ensembles of qubits coupled to a common transmission line resonator.
Finally, in chapter five, we give a brief introduction on how to realize holonomic
gates in superconducting systems. We propose a physical realization and show how
to implement the adiabatic gate sequence.
The conclusions then summarizes the main findings and gives a short outlook on
future research.
An appendix provides details of calculations and gives additional information on
the described methods. A list of publications is also given there.
For ease of notation we use the convention = k =1.B
viContents
Introduction v
Motivation 1
1. Theoretical Background 9
1.1. Quantum Circuit Theory ........................ 10
1.2. Dissipative Quantum Systems ...................... 15
1.3. Floquet Theory .............................. 26
1.4. Holonomic Gates ............................. 30
2. Comparison of Defect Models 35
2.1. System and Models ....................... 36
2.2. Defect Spectroscopy ........................... 42
2.3. Evaluation of Defect Models 50
3. Direct Control of TLS 59
3.1. Rabi-Spectroscopy ............................ 60
3.2. Rabi-Oscillations in the Coupled System ................ 61
3.3. Direct Driving of TLS .......................... 69
4. Interaction Effects 75
4.1. Description of the System ........................ 78
4.2. Weak Coupling .............................. 79
4.3. Coherent Interaction ........................... 84
4.4. Ensemble Effects ............................. 97
4.5. Coupling to Multi-Level Systems ....................104
4.6. Collective Effects in Decoherence108
5. Holonomies in Superconducting Systems 113
5.1. Physical Realization114
5.2. Effective Tripod Hamiltonian ......................116
5.3. Holonomic NOT-Gate ..........................118
Conclusion 125
Bibliography 127
viiContents
A. Circuit Model of Charge TLS 137
B. Model Evaluation - Calculations 149
C. List of Publications 157
viiiMotivation
We start this thesis by motivating our interest in defect systems in superconducting
devices. We then give a short introduction into two-level as a general noise-
model, explaining the ubiquitous 1/f-noise found in solid state systems. In the
following we motivate our interest in coherent two-level systems, as they are found
especially in superconducting qubits, and give a short overview of possible microscopic
explanations.
General
The miniaturization of traditional electronic circuits has led to great advances in
computational power and complexity. But further progress in this field might meet
with a major challenge in the next years. As the dimensions of the circuits become
ever smaller, quantum effects will begin to influence their operation. Already, in
state-of the art MOSFET transistors, special efforts are required to keep the errors
due to quantum tunneling in manageable bounds.
Properly harnessed, quantum effects do not have to be detrimental towards the de-
sired operations. The proposal of a quantum computer relies on quantum mechanical
two-level system and their controllable coherent interaction to achieve exponential
speedup for certain computational tasks [1].
Much effort has been devoted in the last two decades towards designing and char-
acterizing the individual building blocks of a possible quantum computer. Theses
quantum bits, or qubits, have been realized in a large variety of different physical
systems. Among the candidates for possible architectures for quantum computation
are photons in fibers or photonic crystals [2], single ions in electromagnetic traps [3],
neutral atoms in optical crystals [4] and superconducting circuits [5–7], among oth-
ers. Each of these architectures shows particular advantages and challenges, founde