Abstract. We propose a new type of mobile qubit that utilizes a bound pair of half fluxons in a long superconductor-ferromagnet-superconductor (SFS) Josephson junction. The qubit states are composed of the lowest two levels of the quantized nonlinear internal oscillation of the bound pair. The energy levels are estimated by the numerical quantization based on a collective coordinate method. The qubit operation scheme is discussed, showing an estimate of the interaction strength between a bound pair and a microcircuit.
IntroductionA quantum computer is an innovative computer based on the principles of quantum mechanics. The fundamental unit of a quantum computer is a qubit, which is a quantum-mechanical superposition state of a two-state system. As regards solid-state qubits, the precise mechanism providing control of the interaction between an arbitrary pair of qubits remains unresolved. To overcome this problem, we proposed a mobile qubit [1, 2] using breather excitation in a conventional long Josephson junction. However, a breather is fragile with respect to background perturbations. In particular, a breather can disappear through energy loss with dissipation, because it is topologically equivalent to a vacuum. This feature makes it difficult to prepare the initial |0 state needed for quantum computing.Here we propose a new type of mobile qubit that utilizes a bound pair of half fluxons in a long superconductor-ferromagnet-superconductor (SFS) Josephson junction. Transitions between usual (0) and π junction states have been demonstrated in SFS junctions as a function of temperature [3] and barrier thickness [4]. The π junction state is characterized by a ground state at a phase difference of π. In the vicinity of the crossover between the 0 and π states, the second harmonic term in the current-phase relation is expected to dominate [5,6,7,8]. This term would modify the electrodynamics of long SFS junctions, and the propagation of fluxons would be governed by the double sine-Gordon equation (DSGE) instead of the sine-Gordon equation that governs usual long junctions. Since a 2π kink in the double sine-Gordon system splits into two π kinks (half fluxons) and forms a bound pair with nonlinear internal oscillation modes (called π-π kink oscillation), the bound-half-fluxon pair in long SFS junctions can carry