The experimental investigation of quantum devices incorporating mechanical resonators has opened up new frontiers in the study of quantum mechanics at a macroscopic level. It has recently been shown that surface acoustic waves (SAWs) can be piezoelectrically coupled to superconducting qubits, and confined in high-quality Fabry–Perot cavities in the quantum regime. Here we present measurements of a device in which a superconducting qubit is coupled to a SAW cavity, realising a surface acoustic version of cavity quantum electrodynamics. We use measurements of the AC Stark shift between the two systems to determine the coupling strength, which is in agreement with a theoretical model. This quantum acoustodynamics architecture may be used to develop new quantum acoustic devices in which quantum information is stored in trapped on-chip acoustic wavepackets, and manipulated in ways that are impossible with purely electromagnetic signals, due to the 105 times slower mechanical waves.

Harnessing techniques from analog signal processing, we establish a new path for large-scale quantum computation.

We describe and implement a family of entangling gates activated by radio-frequency flux modulation applied to a tunable transmon that is statically coupled to a neighboring transmon. The effect of this modulation is the resonant exchange of photons directly between levels of the two-transmon system, obviating the need for mediating qubits or resonator modes and allowing for the full utilization of all qubits in a scalable architecture. The resonance condition is selective in both the frequency and amplitude of modulation and thus alleviates frequency crowding. We demonstrate the use of three such resonances to produce entangling gates that enable universal quantum computation: one iSWAP gate and two distinct controlled Z gates. We report interleaved randomized benchmarking results indicating gate error rates of 6% for the iSWAP (duration 135ns) and 9% for the controlled Z gates (durations 175 ns and 270 ns), limited largely by qubit coherence.A central challenge in building a scalable quantum computer with superconducting qubits is the execution of high-fidelity, two-qubit gates within an architecture containing many resonant elements. As more elements are added, or as the multiplicity of couplings between elements is increased, the frequency space of the design becomes crowded and device performance suffers. In architectures composed of transmon qubits [1], there are two main approaches to implementing two-qubit gates. The first utilizes fixed-frequency qubits with static couplings where the two-qubit operations are activated by applying transverse microwave drives [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. While fixedfrequency qubits generally have long coherence times, this architecture requires satisfying stringent constraints on qubit frequencies and anharmonicities [5,6,8] which requires some tunability to scale to many qubits [9]. The second approach relies on frequency-tunable transmons, and two-qubit gates are activated by tuning qubits into and out of resonance with a particular transition [10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. However, tunability comes at the cost of additional decoherence channels, thus significantly limiting coherence times [17]. In this approach the delivery of shaped unbalanced control signals poses a challenge [15]. Such gates are furthermore sensitive to frequency crowdingavoiding unwanted crossings with neighboring qubit energy levels during gate operations limits the flexibility and connectivity of the architecture.An alternative to these approaches is to modulate a circuit's couplings or energy levels at a frequency corresponding to the detuning between particular energy levels of interest [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. This enables an entangling gate between a qubit and a single resonator [21,22], a qubit and many resonator modes [26], two transmon qubits coupled by a tunable mediating qubit [16,25], or two tunable transmons coupled to a mediating resonator [23,24].Building on these earlier results, we implement two entangling gates, iSWAP and controlled Z (CZ), between a flux-tunable transmon an...

We present systematic measurements of the quality factors of surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators on ST-X quartz in the gigahertz range at a temperature of $10 \, \textrm{mK}$. We demonstrate a internal quality factor $Q_\mathrm{i}$ approaching $0.5$ million at $0.5 \, \textrm{GHz}$ and show that $Q_\mathrm{i}\geq4.0\times10^4$ is achievable up to $4.4 \, \textrm{GHz}$. We show evidence for a polynomial dependence of propagation loss on frequency, as well as a weak drive power dependence of $Q_\mathrm{i}$ that saturates at low power, the latter being consistent with coupling to a bath of two-level systems. Our results indicate that SAW resonators are promising devices for integration with superconducting quantum circuits.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

It has recently been demonstrated that surface acoustic waves (SAWs) can interact with superconducting qubits at the quantum level. SAW resonators in the GHz frequency range have also been found to have low loss at temperatures compatible with superconducting quantum circuits. These advances open up new possibilities to use the phonon degree of freedom to carry quantum information. In this paper, we give a description of the basic SAW components needed to develop quantum circuits, where propagating or localized SAW-phonons are used both to study basic physics and to manipulate quantum information. Using phonons instead of photons offers new possibilities which make these quantum acoustic circuits very interesting. We discuss general considerations for SAW experiments at the quantum level and describe experiments both with SAW resonators and with interaction between SAWs and a qubit. We also discuss several potential future developments.

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices based on thin films of ZnO are a well established technology. However, SAW devices on bulk ZnO crystals are not practical at room temperature due to the significant damping caused by finite electrical conductivity of the crystal. Here, by operating at low temperatures, we demonstrate effective SAW devices on the (0001) surface of bulk ZnO crystals, including a delay line operating at SAW wavelengths of λ = 4 and 6 µm and a one-port resonator at a wavelength of λ = 1.6 µm. We find that the SAW velocity is temperature dependent, reaching v ≃ 2.68 km/s at 10 mK. Our resonator reaches a maximum quality factor of Q i ≃ 1.5 × 10 5 , demonstrating that bulk ZnO is highly viable for low temperature SAW applications. The performance of the devices is strongly correlated with the bulk conductivity, which quenches SAW transmission above about 200 K.

Enabling applications for solid state quantum technology will require systematically reducing noise, particularly dissipation, in these systems. Yet, when multiple decay channels are present in a system with similar weight, resolution to distinguish relatively small changes is necessary to infer improvements to noise levels. For superconducting qubits, uncontrolled variation of nominal performance makes obtaining such resolution challenging. Here, we approach this problem by investigating specific combinations of previously reported fabrication techniques on the quality of 242 thin film superconducting resonators and qubits. Our results quantify the influence of elementary processes on dissipation at key interfaces. We report that an end-to-end optimization of the manufacturing process that integrates multiple small improvements together can produce an average T 1 = 76 ± 13 µs across 24 qubits with the best qubits having T1 ≥ 110 µs. Moreover, our analysis places bounds on energy decay rates for three fabrication-related loss channels present in state-ofthe-art superconducting qubits. Understanding dissipation through such systematic analysis may pave the way for lower noise solid state quantum computers.

Superconducting circuits are well established as a strong candidate platform for the development of quantum computing. In order to advance to a practically useful level, architectures are needed which combine arrays of many qubits with selective qubit control and readout, without compromising on coherence. Here we present a coaxial circuit QED architecture in which qubit and resonator are fabricated on opposing sides of a single chip, and control and readout wiring are provided by coaxial wiring running perpendicular to the chip plane. We present characterisation measurements of a fabricated device in good agreement with simulated parameters and demonstrating energy relaxation and dephasing times of $T_1 = 4.1\,\mu$s and $T_2 = 5.7\,\mu$s respectively. The architecture allows for scaling to large arrays of selectively controlled and measured qubits with the advantage of all wiring being out of the plane.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl