Superconducting Quantum Circuits, Qubits and Computing

Superconducting Quantum Circuits, Qubits and Computing
G. Wendin and V.S. Shumeiko

Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience - MC2,
Chalmers University of Technology,
arXiv:cond-mat/0508729v1 [cond-mat.supr-con] 30 Aug 2005
SE-41296 Gothenburg, Sweden

(Dated: February 2, 2008)
This paper gives an introduction to the physics and principles of operation of quantized super-
conducting electrical circuits for quantum information processing.
Table of contents Variable inductive coupling

Variable Josephson coupling
Variable phase coupling
I. Introduction Variable capacitive coupling
II. Nanotechnology, computers and qubits (h) Two qubits coupled via a resonator
III. Basics of quantum computation X. Dynamics of multi-qubit systems
(a) Conditions for quantum information processing (a) General N-qubit formulation
(b) Qubits and entanglement (b) Two qubits, Ising-type transverse zz coupling
(c) Operations and gates Biasing far away from the degeneracy point
(d) Readout and state preparation Biasing at the degeneracy point
IV. Dynamics of two-level systems (c) Two qubits, transverse xx coupling
(a) The two-level state (d) Two qubits, yy coupling
(b) State evolution on the Bloch sphere (e) Effects of the environment: noise and decoherence
(c) dc-pulses, sudden switching and precession XI. Experiments with single qubits and readout
(d) Adiabatic switching devices
(e) Harmonic perturbation and Rabi oscillation (a) Readout detectors
(g) Decoherence of qubit systems (b) Operation and measurement procedures
V. Classical superconducting circuits (c) NIST current-biased Josephson junction qubit
(a) Current biased Josephson junction (d) Flux qubits
(b) rf-SQUID (e) Charge-phase qubit
(c) dc-SQUID XII. Experiments with qubits coupled to quan-
(d) Single Cooper pair Box tum oscillators
VI. Quantum superconducting circuits (a) General discussion
VII. Basic qubits (b) Delft persistent current flux qubit coupled to a
(a) Josephson junction (JJ) qubit quantum oscillator
(b) Charge qubits (c) Yale charge-phase qubit coupled to a strip-line
Single Cooper pair Box (SCB) resonator
Single Cooper pair Transistor (SCT) (d) Comparison of the Delft and Yale approaches
(d) Flux qubits XIII. Experimental manipulation of coupled
rf-SQUID two-qubit systems
3-junction SQUID - persistent current qubit (PCQ) (a) Capacitively coupled charge qubits
(e) Potential qubits (b) Inductively coupled charge qubits
VIII. Qubit read-out and measurement of quan- (c) Capacitively coupled JJ phase qubits
tum information XIV. Quantum state engineering with multi-
(a) Readout: why, when and how? qubit JJ systems
(b) Direct qubit measurement (a) Bell measurements
(c) Measurement of charge qubit with SET (b) Teleportation
(d) Measurement via coupled oscillator (c) Qubit buses and entanglement transfer
(e) Threshold detection (d) Qubit encoding and quantum error correction
IX. Physical coupling schemes for two qubits XV. Conclusion and perspectives
(a) General principles Glossary
(b) Inductive coupling of flux qubits References
(c) Capacitive coupling of single JJ qubits
(d) JJ coupling of charge qubits
(f) Coupling via oscillators
Coupling of charge qubits
Phase coupling of SCT qubits
(g) Variable-coupling schemes
2
I. INTRODUCTION tance of quantum computers on any time scale, but there

is no doubt that the research will be a powerful driver of
The first demonstration of oscillation of a supercon- the development of solid-state quantum state engineering
ducting qubit by Nakamura et al. in 19991 can be and quantum technology, e.g. performing measurements
said to represent the ”tip of the iceberg”: it rests on ”at the edge of the impossible”.
a huge volume of advanced research on Josephson junc- This article aims at describing the inner workings of
tions (JJ) and circuits developed during the last 25 superconducting Josephson junction (JJ) circuits, how
years. Some of this work has concerned fundamen- these can form two-level systems acting as qubits, and
tal research on Josephson junctions and superconduct- how they can be coupled together to multi-qubit net-
ing quantum interferometers (SQUIDs) aimed at under- works. Since the field of experimental qubit applications
standing macroscopic quantum coherence (MQC)2,3,4,5 , is only five years old, it is not even clear if the field repre-
providing the foundation of the persistent current flux sents an emerging technology for computers. Neverthe-
qubit6,7,8 . However, there has also been intense research less, the JJ-technology is presently the only example of a
aimed at developing superconducting flux-based digital working solid state qubit with long coherence time, with
electronics and computers9,10,11 . Moreover, in the 1990’s demonstrated two-qubit gate operation and readout, and
the single-Cooper-pair box/transistor (SCB, SCT)12 , was with potential for scalability. This makes it worthwile to
developed experimentally and used to demonstrate the describe this system in some detail.
quantization of Cooper pairs on a small superconducting It needs to be said, however, that much of the basic
island13 , which is the foundation of the charge qubit1,14 . theory for coupled JJ-qubits was worked out well ahead
Since then there has been a steady of experiment14,41,42 , defining and elaborating basic op-
development15,16,17,18,19 , with observation of microwave- eration and coupling schemes. We recommend the reader
induced Rabi oscillation of the two-level populations to take a good look at the excellent research and re-
in charge21,22,23 , and flux24,25,26,27 qubits and dc- view paper by Makhlin et al.42 which describes the basic
pulse driven oscillation of charge qubits with rf-SET principles of a multi-JJ-qubit information processor, in-
detection28 . An important step is the development of the cluding essential schemes for qubit-qubit coupling. The
charge-phase qubit, a hybrid version of the charge qubit ambition of the present article is to provide a both in-
consisting of an SCT in a superconducting loop21,22 , troductory and in-depth overview of essential Josephson
demonstrating Rabi oscillations with very long coherence junction quantum circuits, discuss basic issues of readout
time, of the order of 1 µs, allowing a large set of basic and measurement, and connect to the recent experimen-
and advanced (”NMR-like”) one-qubit operations (gates) tal progress with JJ-based qubits for quantum informa-
to be performed23 . In addition, coherent oscillations tion processing (JJ-QIP).
have been demonstrated in the ”simplest” JJ qubits of
them all, namely a single Josephson junction30,31,32,33 ,
or a two-JJ dc-SQUID34 , where the qubit is formed by II. NANOTECHNOLOGY, COMPUTERS AND
the two lowest states in the periodic potential of the JJ QUBITS
itself.
Although a powerful JJ-based quantum computer with The scaling down of microelectronics into the nanome-
hundreds of qubits remains a distant goal, systems with ter range will inevitably make quantum effects like tun-
5-10 qubits will be built and tested by, say, 2010. Pair- neling and wave propagation important. This will even-
wise coupling of qubits for two-qubit gate operations is tually impede the functioning of classical transistor com-
then an essential task, and a few experiments with cou- ponents, but will also open up new opportunities for
pled JJ-qubits with fixed capacitive or inductive cou- multi-terminal components and logic circuits built on e.g.
plings have been reported35,36,37,38,39,40 , in particular the resonant tunneling, ballistic transport, single electronics,
first realization of a controlled-NOT gate with two cou- etc.
pled SCBs36 , used together with a one-qubit Hadamard There are two main branches of fundamentally differ-
gate to generate an entangled two-qubit state. ent computer architectures, namely logically irreversible
For scalability, and simple operation, the ability to con- and logically reversible. Ordinary computers are irre-
trol qubit couplings, e.g. switching them on and off, will versible because they dissipate both energy and infor-
be essential. So far, experiments on coupled JJ qubits mation. Even if CMOS circuits in principle only draw
have been performed without direct physical control of current when switching, this is nevertheless the source
the qubit coupling, but there are many proposed schemes of intense local heat generation, threatening to burn up
for two(multi)-qubit gates based on fixed or controllable future processor chips. The energy dissipation can in
physical qubit-qubit couplings or tunings of qubits and principle be reduced by going to single-electron devices,
bus resonators. superconducting electronics and quantum devices, but
All of the JJ-circuit devices introduced above are this does not alter the fact that the information process-
based on nanoscale science and technology and represent ing is logically irreversible. In the simplest case of an
emerging technologies for quantum engineering and, at AND gate, two incoming bit lines only result in a single
best, information processing. One may debate the impor- bit output, which means that one bit is in practice erased
3
(initialized to zero) and the heat irreversibly dissipated

to the environment. The use of quantum-effect devices
does not change the fact that we are dealing with com-
puters where each gate is logically irreversible and where
discarded information constantly is erased and turned
into heat. A computer with quantum device components
therefore does not make a quantum computer.
A quantum information processor has to be built on
fundamentally reversible schemes with reversible gates
where no information is discarded, and where all inter-
nal processes in the components are elastic. This issue
is connected with the problem of the minimum energy FIG. 1: 3-junction persistent current flux qubit (PCQ) (inner
needed for performing a calculation43 (connected with loop) surrounded by a 2-junction SQUID. Courtesy of J.E.
the entropy change created by erasing the final result, Mooij, TU Delft.
i.e. reading the result and then clearing the register). A
reversible information processor can in principle be built
by classical means using adiabatically switched networks
of different kinds. The principles were investigated in the
1980’s and form a background for much of the work on
quantum computation44,45,46,47,48,49,50 . Recently there
has been some very interesting development of reversible
computers (see51,52,53,54 and references therein). How-
ever, a reversible computer still does not make a quan-
tum computer. What is characteristic for a quantum
computer is that it is reversible and quantum coherent,
meaning that one can build entangled non-classical multi- FIG. 2: Single Cooper pair box (SCB) (right) coupled to a
qubit states. single-electron transistor (SET) (left) for readout. Courtesy
One can broadly distinguish between microscopic, of P. Delsing, Chalmers.
mesoscopic and macroscopic qubits. Microscopic effec-
tive two-level systems are localized systems confined by
natural or artificial constraining potentials. Natural sys- EoH68 . This is really an atomic-like microscopic qubit:
tems then typically are atomic or molecular impurities a thin film of liquid He is made to cover a Si surface,
utilizing electronic charge, or electronic or nuclear spins. and electrons are bound by the image force above the He
These systems may be implanted55,56 or naturally oc- surface, forming an electronic two-level system. Qubits
curring due to the material growth process57 . A related are laterally defined by electrostatic gate patterns in the
type of impurity qubit involves endohedral fullerenes, i.e. Si substrate, which also defines circuits for qubit control,
atoms implanted into C60 or similar cages58 , to be placed qubit coupling and readout.
at specific positions on a surface prepared for control and Macroscopic superconducting qubits - the subject of
readout. this article - are based on electrical circuits containing
Mesoscopic qubit systems typically involve geomet- Josephson junctions (JJ). Looking at two extreme exam-
rically defined confining potentials like quantum dots. ples, the principle is actually very simple. In one limit,
Quantum dots (QD) for qubits59 are usually made in the qubit is simply represented by the two rotation direc-
semiconductor materials. One type of QD is a small tions of the persistent supercurrent of Cooper pairs in a
natural or artificial semiconductor grain with quantized superconducting ring containing Josephson tunnel junc-
electronic levels. The electronic excitations may be ex- tions (rf-SQUID)(flux qubit)6,7,8 , shown below in Fig. 1
citonic (excitons,60,61 or biexcitons,62 ), charge-like63, or for the Delft 3-junction flux qubit,
spin-like (e.g. singlet-triplet)64,65 . Another type of QD In another limit, the qubit is represented by the pres-
is geometrically defined in semiconductor 2DEG by elec- ence or absence of a Cooper pair on a small supercon-
trostatic split-gate arrangements. Although the host ma- ducting island (Single Cooper pair Box, SCB, or Transis-
terials are epitaxially layered semiconducting materials tor, SCT) (charge qubit)1,13,28,69 , as illustrated in Fig. 2.
(e.g.GaAs/AlGaAs), the ungated 2DEG electronic sys- Hybrid circuits21,70,71 can in principle be tuned between
tem is metallic. A split-gate arrangement can then define these limits by varing the relations between the electro-
a voltage-controlled system of quantum dots coupled to static charging energy EC and the Josephson tunneling
metallic reservoir electrodes, creating a system for elec- energy EJ .
tron charge and spin transport through quantum point All of these solid-state qubits have advantages and dis-
contacts and (effective) two-level quantum dots64,65,66,67 . advantages, and only systematic research and develop-
There is also a potential qubit based on liquid He ment of multi-qubit systems will show the practical and
superfluid technology, namely ”Electrons on Helium”, ultimate limitations of various systems. The supercon-
4
ducting systems have presently the undisputable advan-

tage of acutally existing, showing Rabi oscillations and
responding to one- and two-qubit gate operations. In
fact, even an elementary SCB two-qubit entangling gate
creating Bell-type states has been demonstrated very
recently36 . All of the non-superconducting qubits are
so far, promising but still potential qubits. Several of
the impurity electron spin qubits show impressive relax-
ation lifetimes in bulk measurements, but it remains to
demonstrate how to read out individual qubit spins.
III. BASICS OF QUANTUM COMPUTATION
A. Conditions for quantum information processing
DiVincenzo72 has formulated a set of rules and con- FIG. 3: The Bloch sphere. Points on the sphere correspond
ditions that need to be fulfilled in order for quantum to the quantum states |ψi; in particular, the north and south
computing to be possible: poles correspond to the computational basis states |0i and
1. Register of 2-level systems (qubits), n = 2N states |1i; superposition cat-states |ψi = |0i + eiφ |1i are situated on
|101..01i (N qubits) the equator.
2. Initialization of the qubit register: e.g. setting it to
|000..00i
3. Tools for manipulation: 1- and 2-qubit gates, e.g. can be characterised by a unit vector on the Bloch sphere:
Hadamard (H) gates to flip the spin to the equator,
UH |0i = (|0i + |1i)/2, and Controlled-NOT (CN OT ) The state vector can be represented as a unitary vector
gates to create entangled states, UCN OT UH |00 >= on the Bloch sphere, and general unitary (rotation) oper-
(|00i + |11i)/2 (Bell state) ations make it possible to reach every point on the Bloch
4. Read-out of single qubits |ψi = a|0i + beiφ |1i → a, b sphere. The qubit is therefore an analogue object with
(spin projection; phase φ of qubit lost) a continuum of possible states. Only in the case of spin
5. Long decoherence times: > 104 2-qubit gate opera- 1/2 systems do we have a true two-level system. In the
tions needed for error correction to maintain coherence general case, the qubit is represented by the lowest levels
”forever”. of a multi-level system, which means that the length of
6. Transport qubits and to transfer entanglement be- the state vector may not be conserved due to transitions
tween different coherent systems (quantum-quantum in- to other levels. The first condition will therefore be to
terfaces). operate the qubit so that it stays on the Bloch sphere
7. Create classical-quantum interfaces for control, read- (fidelity). Competing with normal operation, noise from
out and information storage. the environment may cause fluctuation of both qubit am-
plitude and phase, leading to relaxation and decoherence.
It is a delicate matter to isolate the qubit from a perturb-
B. Qubits and entanglement ing environment, and desirable operation and unwanted
perturbation (noise) easily go hand in hand. It is a major
A qubit is a two-level quantum system caracterized by issue to design qubit control and read-out such that the
the state vector necessary communication lines can be blocked when not
in use.
θ θ The state of N independent qubits can be represented
|ψi = cos |0i + sin eiφ |1i (3.1)
2 2 as a product state,
Expressing |0i and |1i in terms of the eigenvectors of the
|ψi = |ψ1 i|ψ2 i....|ψN i = |ψ1 ψ2 ....ψN i (3.4)
Pauli matrix σz ,

1

0 involving any one of all of the configurations |00...0 >,
|0i = , |1i = . (3.2) |00...1 >, ...., |11...1 >. A general state of an N-qubit
0 1
memory register (i.e. a many-body system) can then
this can be described as a rotation from the north pole be written as a time-dependent superposition of many-
of the |0i state, particle configurations
cos θ2 − sin 2θ |ψ(t)i = c1 (t)|0...00i + c2 (t)|0...01i (3.5)

1 0 1
|ψi = (3.3)
0 eiφ sin θ2 cos 2θ 0 + c3 (t)|0...10i + .... + cn (t)|1...11i
5
where the amplitudes ci (t) are complex, providing phase describing the time evolution of the entire N -particle
information. This state represents a time-dependent su- state in the interval [t, t0 ]. If the total Hamiltonian com-
perposition of 2N N-body configurations which in gen- mutes with itself at different times, the time ordering can
eral cannot be written as a product of one-qubit states be omitted,
and then represents an entangled (quantum correlated) Rt
−i Ĥ(t′ )dt′
many-body state. U (t, t0 ) = e h̄ t0 . (3.17)
In the case of two qubits, the maximally entangled
states are the so-called Bell states, This describes the time-evolution controlled by a ho-
mogeneous time-dependent potential or electromagnetic
|ψi = (|00i + |11i)/2 (3.6) field, e.g. dc or ac pulses with finite rise times but having
|ψi = (|00i − |11i)/2 (3.7) no space-dependence. If the Hamiltonian is constant in
|ψi = (|01i + |10i)/2 (3.8) the interval [t0 , t], then the evolution operator takes the
simple form
|ψi = (|01i − |10i)/2 (3.9)
i
U (t, t0 ) = e− h̄ Ĥ(t−t0 ) , (3.18)
where the last one is the singlet state. In the case
of three qubits, the corresponding maximally entan- describing the time-evolution controlled by square dc
gled (”cat”) states are the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger pulses.
(GHZ) states73 The time-development will depend on how many terms
√ are switched on in the Hamiltonian during this time in-
|ψi = (|000i ± |111i)/ 8 (3.10) terval. In the ideal case, usually not realizable, all terms
are switched off except for those selected for the specific
Another interesting entangled three-qubit state appears computational step. A single qubit gate operation then
in the teleportation process, involves turning on a particular term in the Hamiltonian
for a specific qubit, while a two-qubit gate involves turn-
|ψi = [|00i(a|0i + b|1i) + |01i(a|0i − b|1i) (3.11) ing on an interaction term between two specific qubits.
√
+|10i(b|0i + a|1i) + |11i(b|0i − a|1i)]/ 8 In principle one can perform an N -qubit gate operation
by turning on interactions for all N qubits. In practical
cases, many terms in the Hamiltonian are turned on all
C. Operations and gates the time, leading to a ”background” time development
that has to be taken into account.
Quantum computation basically means allowing the The basic model for a two-level qubit is the spin-1/2 in
N -body state to develop in a fully coherent fashion a magnetic field. A system of interacting qubits can then
through unitary transformations acting on all N qubits. be modelled by a collection of interacting spins, described
The time evolution of the many-body system of N two- by the Heisenberg Hamiltonian
level subsystems can be described by the Schrödinger X 1X
equation for the N -level state vector |ψ(t)i, Ĥ(t) = hi (t) Si + Jij (t) Si Sj (3.19)
2
ih̄∂t |ψi = Ĥ|ψi. (3.12) controlled by a time-dependent external magnetic field
hi (t) and by a time-dependent spin-spin coupling Jij (t).
in terms of the time-evolution operator characterizing by Expressing the Hamiltonian in Cartesian components,
the time-dependent many-body Hamiltonian Ĥ(t) of the hi (t) = (hx , hy , hz ), Si (t) = (Sx , Sy , Sz ) and introducing
system determined by the external control operations and the Pauli σ-matrices, (Sx , Sy , Sz ) = 12 h̄(σx , σy , σz ) we
the perturbing noise from the environment, obtain a general N-qubit Hamiltonian with general qubit-
qubit coupling:
|ψ(t)i = U (t, t0 )|ψ(t0 )i. (3.13)
1X
Ĥ = − (ǫi σzi + Re∆i σxi + Im∆i σyi ) (3.20)
The solution of Schrödinger equation for U (t, t0 ) 2 i
ih̄∂t U (t, t0 ) = ĤU (t, t0 ) (3.14) 1X

+ λν,ij (t) σνi σνj
2 ij;ν
may be written as X
+ (fi (t)σzi + gxi (t)σxi + gyi (t)σyi )
t
i
Z
i
U (t, t0 ) = 1 − Ĥ(t′ )U (t′ , t0 )dt′ , (3.15)
h̄ t0 We have here introduced time-independent components
of the external field defining qubit energy level splittings
and finally, in terms of the time-ordering operator T, as ǫi , Re∆i and Im∆i along the z and x,y axes, as well
− h̄i
Rt
Ĥ(t′ )dt′
as time-dependent components fi (t) and gi (t) explicitly
U (t, t0 ) = T e t0
, (3.16) describing qubit operation and readout signals and noise.
6
Inserted into Eq.(3.17), this Hamiltonian determines to the operation fields. This also opens up the system
the time evolution of the many-qubit state. In the ideal to a noisy environment, which puts great demands on
case one can turn on and off each individual term of the signal-to-noise ratios.
Hamiltonian, including the two-body interaction, giving The readout operation is a particularly critical step.
complete control of the evolution of the state. The ultimate purpose is to perform a ”single-shot” quan-
It has been shown that any unitary transformation can tum non-demolition (QND) measurement, determining
be achieved through a quantum network of sequential the state (|0i or |1i) of the qubit in a single measure-
application of one- and two-qubit gates. Moreover, the ment and then leaving the qubit in that very state. Dur-
size of the coherent workspace of the multi-qubit memory ing the measurement time, the back-action noise from the
can be varied (in principle) by switching on and off qubit- ”meter” will cause relaxation and mixing, changing the
qubit interactions. qubit state. The ”meter” must then be sensitive enough
In the common case of NMR applied to to detect the qubit state on a time scale shorter than the
molecules74,75,76 , one has no control of the fixed, induced relaxation time T1∗ in the presence of the dissipa-
direct spin-spin coupling. With an external magnetic tive back-action of the ”meter” itself. Under these con-
field one can control the qubit Zeeman level splittings ditions it is possible to detect the qubit projection in a
(no control of individual qubits). Individual qubits can single measurement (single shot read-out). Performing a
be addressed by external RF-fields since the qubits have single-shot projective measurement in the qubit eigenba-
different resonance frequencies (due to different chemical sis then provides a QND measurement (note the ”trivial”
environments in a molecule). Two-qubit coupling can fact that the phase is irreversibly lost in the measurement
be induced by simultaneous resonant excitation of two process under any circumstances).
qubits. The readout/measurement processes described above
In the case of engineered solid state JJ-circuits, indi- can be related to the Stern-Gerlach (SG) experiment80 .
vidual qubits can be addressed by local gates, control- A SG spin filter acts as a beam splitter for flying qubits,
ling the local electric or magnetic field. Extensive single- creating separate paths for spin-up and spin-down atoms,
qubit operation has recently been demonstrated by Collin preparing for the measurement by making it possible in
et al.23 . Regarding two-qubit coupling, the field is just principle to distinguish spatially between the two states
starting up, and different options are only beginning to of the qubit. The measurement is then performed by
be tested. The most straightforward approaches involve particle counters: a click in, say, the spin-up path col-
fixed capacitive35,36,40 or inductive37,38 coupling; such lapses the atom to the spin-up state in a single shot.
systems could be operated in NMR style, by detuning There is essentially no decohering back-action from the
specific qubit pairs into resonance. Moreover, there are detector until the atom is detected. However, after de-
various solutions for controlling the direct physical qubit- tection of the spin-up atom the state is thoroughly de-
qubit coupling strength, as will be described in Section stroyed: this qubit has not only decohered and relaxed,
IX. but is removed from the system. However, if it was entan-
gled with other qubits, these are left in a specific eigen-
state. For example, if the qubit was part of the Bell pair
D. Readout and state preparation |ψi = (|00i + |11i)/2, detection of spin up (|0i) selects
|00i and leaves the other qubit in state |0i. If instead the
External perturbations, described by fi (t) and gi (t) in qubit was part of the Bell pair |ψi = (|01i + |10i)/2, de-
Eq.(3.20) can influence the two-level system in typically tection of spin up (|0i) selects |01i and leaves the other
two ways: (i) shifting the individual energy levels, which qubit in the spin-down state |1i. Furthermore, √ for the
may change the transition energy and the phase of the 3-qubit GHZ state |ψi = (|000i ± |111i)/ 8, detection
qubit; and (ii) inducing transitions between the levels, of the first qubit in the spin up (|0i) state leaves the
changing the level populations. These effects arise both remaining 2-qubit system in the |00i state.
from desirable control operations and from unwanted Finally, in the case of the three-qubit entangled state
noise (see42,77,78,79 for a discussion of superconducting in the teleportation process, Eq.(3.11), detection of the
circuits, and Grangier et al.80 for a discussion of state first qubit in the spin up state |0i, leaves the remaining
preparation and quantum non-demolition (QND) mea- 2-qubit system in the entangled state [|0i(a|0i + b|1i) +
surements). |1i(a|0i−b|1i)]/2. Moreover, detection of also the second
To control a qubit register, the important thing is to qubit in the spin-up state√|0i will leave the third qubit
control the decoherence during qubit operation and read- in the state (a|0i + b|1i)/ 2. In this way, measurement
out, and in the memory state. In the qubit memory state, can be used for state preparation.
the qubit must be isolated from the environment. Op- Applying this discussion to the measurement and read-
eration and read-out devices should be decoupled from out of JJ-qubit circuits, an obvious difference is that the
the qubit and, ideally, not cause any dephasing or relax- JJ-qubits are not flying particles. The detection can
ation. The resulting intrinsic qubit life times should be there not be turned on simply by the qubit flying into
long compared to the duration of the calculation. In the the detector. Instead, the detector is part of the JJ-qubit
operation and readout state, the qubit must be connected circuitry, and must be turned on to discriminate between
7
the two qubit states. These are not spatially separated and project onto the basis states
and therefore sensitive to level mixing by detector noise X
with frequency around the qubit transition energy. The Ĥ |mihm|ψi = E|ψi (4.4)
sensitivity of the detector determines the time scale Tm m
of the measurement, and the detector-on back-action de-
termines the time scale of qubit relaxation T1∗ . Clearly obtaining the ususal matrix equation
Tm ≪ T1∗ is needed for single-shot discrimination of |0i X
and |1i. This requires a detector signal-to-noise (S/N) hk|Ĥ|miam = Eak (4.5)
m
ratio ≫ 1, in which case one will have the possibility also
to turn off the detector and leave the qubit in the deter- where ak = hk|ψi, and
mined eigenstate, now relaxing on the much longer time
scale T1 of the ”isolated” qubit. This would then be the
ultimate QND measurement. ǫ ∆
Hqp = − hk|σz |mi − hk|σx |mi (4.6)
Note that in the above discussion, the qubit dephas- 2 2
ing time (”isolated” qubit) does not enter because it is giving the Hamiltonian matrix
assumed to be much longer than the measurement time,
Tm ≪ Tφ . This condition is obviously essential for uti-
lizing the measurement process for state preparation and 1 ǫ ∆
error correction. Ĥ = − (4.7)
2 ∆ −ǫ
The Schrödinger equation is then given by

IV. DYNAMICS OF TWO-LEVEL SYSTEMS
1 ǫ + 2E ∆ a1
(Ĥ − E)|ψi = − =0
2 ∆ −ǫ + 2E a2
To perform computational tasks one must be able to (4.8)
put a qubit in an arbitrary state. This is usually done The eigenvalues are determined by
in two steps. The first step, initialization, consists of
relaxation of the initial qubit state to the equilibrium 1
state due to interaction with environment. At low tem- det(Ĥ − E) = E 2 − (ǫ2 + ∆2 ) = 0 (4.9)
4
perature, this state is close to the ground state. During
the next step, time dependent dc- or rf-pulses are ap- with the result
plied to the controlling gates: electrostatic gate in the 1p 2
case of charge qubits, bias flux in the case of flux qubits, E1,2 = ± ǫ + ∆2 (4.10)
2
and bias current in the case of the JJ qubit. Formally,
the pulses enter as time-dependent contributions to the The eigenvectors are given by:
Hamiltonian and the state evolves under the action of the
time-evolution operator. To study the dynamics of a sin- ∆
gle qubit two-level system we therefore first describe the a2 = −a1 (4.11)
two-level state, and then the evolution of this state under ǫ + 2E
the influence of the control pulses (”perturbations”). After normalisation
s
2
A. The two-level state ∆ 1 ǫ
r
a1 = 1/ 1 + = √ 1± (4.12)
ǫ + 2E 2 |2E|
The general 1-qubit Hamiltonian has the form
1 ǫ
r
1
q
2
a2 = ± 1 − a1 = ± √ 1∓ (4.13)
Ĥ = − (ǫ σz + ∆ σx ) (4.1)
2 2 |2E|
The qubit eigenstates are to be found from the stationary We finally simplify the notation by fixing the signs of
Schrödinger equation the amplitudes,
1 ǫ 1 ǫ
r r
Ĥ|ψi = E|ψi (4.2) a1 = √ 1+ ; a2 = √ 1− ; (4.14)
2 |2E| 2 |2E|
To solve the S-equation we expand the 1-qubit state in a
complete basis, e.g. the basis states of the σz operator, and explicitly writing down all the energy eigenstates,
X |E1 i = a1 |0i + a2 |1i (4.15)
|ψi = ak |ki = c0 |0i + c1 |1i (4.3)
k |E2 i = a2 |0i − a1 |1i (4.16)
8
where giving a 3-vector representation for the Hamiltonian,

1 1
q q
E1 = − ǫ21 + ∆21 ; E2 = + ǫ21 + ∆21 (4.17) H = (Hx , Hy , Hz ). (4.25)
2 2
The sign of |E2 i has been chosen to give the familiar shown in Fig. 4.
expression for the superposition
√ at the degeneracy point
ǫ1 = 0 where |a1 | = |a2 | = 1/ 2, H 0
1
|E1 i = √ (|0i + |1i) (4.18)
2
1
|E2 i = √ (|0i − |1i) (4.19)
2
ρ
B. The state evolution on the Bloch sphere
To study the time-evolution of a general state, a conve-

nient way is to expand in the basis of energy eigenstates,
|ψ(t)i = c1 |E1 ie−iE1 t + c2 |E2 ie−iE2 t (4.20)
If we know the coefficients at t = 0, then we know the
time evolution. On the Bloch sphere this time evolution
is represented by rotation of the Bloch vector with con-
1
stant angular speed (E1 − E2 )/h̄ around the direction
defined by the energy eigenbasis. Indeed, by introduc- FIG. 4: The Bloch sphere: the Bloch vector ρ represents the
ing parameterization, c1 = cos θ′ , c2 = sin θ′ eiφ′ , we see states of the two-level system (same as in Fig. 3). The poles
of the Bloch sphere correspond to the energy eigenstates; the
that according to Eq. (4.20) the polar angle remains
vector H represents the two-level Hamiltonian.
constant, θ′ = const, while the azimuthal angle grows,
φ′ (t)φ′ (0) + (E1 − E2 )t/h̄. The primed angles here refer
to a new coordinate system on the Bloch sphere related to The time evolution of the density matrix is given by
the energy eigenbasis, which is obtained by rotation from the Liouville equation,
the earlier introduced computational basis, Eq. (3.1).
ih̄∂t ρ̂ = [Ĥ, ρ̂]. (4.26)
The dynamics on the Bloch sphere is conveniently de-
scribed in terms of the density matrix for a pure quantum The vector form of the Liouville equation is readily de-
state81 , rived by inserting Eqs.(4.24),(4.25) and using the com-
ρ̂ = |ψihψ|. (4.21) mutation relations among the Pauli matrices,
1
This is a 2 × 2 Hermitian matrix whose diagonal ele- ∂t ρ = [ H × ρ ]. (4.27)
ments ρ1 and ρ2 define occupation probabilities of the h̄
basis states, hence satisfying the normalization condition This equation coincides with the Bloch equation for a
ρ1 + ρ2 = 1, while the off-diagonal elements give informa- magnetic moment evolving in a magnetic field, the role
tion about the phase. The density matrix can be mapped of the magnetic moment being played by the Bloch vector
on a real 3-vector by means of the standard expansion in ρ which rotates around the effective ”magnetic field” H
terms of σ-matrices, associated with the Hamiltonian of the qubit (plus any
1 driving fields) (Fig. 4).
ρ̂ = (1 + ρx σx + ρy σy + ρz σz ). (4.22)
2
Direct calculation of the density matrix Eq.(4.21) using C. dc-pulses, sudden switching and free precession
Eq.(3.1) and comparing with Eq.(4.22) shows that the
vector ρ = (ρx , ρy , ρz ) coincides with the Bloch vector, To control the dynamics of the qubit system, one
method is to apply dc (square) pulses which suddenly
ρ = (sin θ cos φ, sin θ sin φ, cos θ) (4.23)
change the Hamiltonian and, consequently, the time-
introduced in Fig. 3 and also shown in Fig. 4. In the evolution operator. Sudden pulse switching means that
same σ-matrix basis, the general two-level Hamiltonian the time-dependent Hamiltonian is changed so fast on
takes the form the time scale of the evolution of the state vector that
the state vector can be treated as time-independent -
Ĥ = (Hx σx + Hy σy + Hz σz ). (4.24) frozen - during the switching time interval. This implies
9
that the system is excited by a Fourier spectrum with an

upper cut-off given by the inverse of the switching time. H
In the specific scheme of sudden switching of different
terms in the Hamiltonian using dc-pulses, the initial state ρ
is frozen during the switching event, and begins to evolve
in time under the influence of the new H ρ
|0i = |ψ(0)i = c1 |E1 i + c2 |E2 i (4.28)
To find the coefficients we project onto the charge basis, a) b)

k=0,1
H H
h0|0i = c1 h0|E1 i + c2 h0|E2 i (4.29)
h1|0i = c1 h1|E1 i + c2 h1|E2 i (4.30)
and use the explict results for the energy eigenstates to

calculate the matrix elements, obtaining ρ ρ
1 = c1 a 1 + c2 a 2 (4.31)
0 = c1 a 2 − c2 a 1 (4.32) c) d)
As a result, FIG. 5: Qubit operations with dc-pulses: the vector H repre-
sents the qubit Hamiltonian, and the vector ρ represents the
|0i = a1 |E1 i + a2 |E2 i (4.33) qubit state. a) The qubit is initialized to the ground state;
b) the Hamiltonian vector H is suddenly rotated towards x-
This stationary state then develops in time governed by axis, and the qubit state vector ρ starts to precess around
the constant Hamiltonian as H; c) when qubit vector reaches the south pole of the Bloch
sphere, the Hamiltonian vector H is switched back to the
|ψ(t)i = a1 e−iE1 t |E1 i + a2 e−iE2 t |E2 i (4.34) initial position; the vector ρ remains at the south pole, indi-
cating complete inversion of the level population (π-pulse); d)
Inserting the energy eigenstates we finally obtain the time if the Hamiltonian vector H is switched back when the qubit
evolution in the charge basis, vector reaches the equator of the Bloch sphere (π/2-pulse),
then the ρ vector remains precessing at the equator, repre-
|ψ(t)i = senting equal-weighted superposition of the qubit states (cat
states) |ψi = |0i + eiφ |1i; this operation is the basis for the
a21 e−iE1 t a22 eiE1 t −iE1 t
− eiE1 t )

|0i + + |1i a1 a2 (e Hadamard gate.
(4.35)
The probability amplitudes of finding the system in one Let us consider, for example, the diagonal qubit Hamil-
of the two charge states is then tonian, Ĥ = (ǫ/2)σz , and apply a pulse δǫ during a
time τ . This operation will shift phases of the qubit
h0|ψ(t)i = a21 e−iE1 t + a22 eiE1 t

(4.36) eigenstates by, ±δǫτ /2h̄. If the applied pulse is such
−iE1 t iE1 t

h1|ψ(t)i = a1 a2 (e −e ) (4.37) that ǫ is switched off, and instead, the σx component,
∆, is switched on, Fig 5, then the state vector will ro-
If the system is driven√to the degeneracy point ǫ1 = 0, tate around the x-axis, and after the time ∆τ /2h̄ = π
where |a1 | = |a2 | = 1/ 2, then (π-pulse) the ground state, |+i, will flip and become,
|+i → |−i. This manipulation corresponds to the quan-
h0|ψ(t)i = cos E1 t (4.38) tum NOT operation. Furthermore, if the pulse duration
h1|ψ(t)i = sin E1 t (4.39) is twice smaller (π/2-pulse), then the ground state vector
will approach the equator of the Bloch sphere and pre-
In particular, the probability of finding the system in cess along it after the end of the operation. Such state is
state |1i (level 2) oscillates like an equal-weighted superposition of the basis states (cat
state).
p2 (t) = |h1|ψ(t)i| = sin2 E1 t
1
= [1 − cos (E2 − E1 )t] (4.40)
2 D. Adiabatic switching
with the frequency of the interlevel distance. On the
Bloch sphere, this describes free precession around the Adiabatic switching represents the opposite limit to
X-axis. sudden switching, namely that the state develops so fast
10
on the time scale of the Hamiltonian that this can be Thus, the dynamics of a driven qubit is characterized by
regarded as ”frozen” , i.e. the time-dependence of the a linear combination of the two wave functions,
Hamiltonian becomes parametric. This implies that en-
ergy is conserved and no transitions are induced - the 1
|ψ (1) i = √ e−iλx t/2h̄ e−iE1 t/h̄ |E1 i + e−iE2 t/h̄ |E2 i ,
system stays in the same energy level (although the state 2
changes). (2) 1 iλx t/2h̄ −iE1 t/h̄
|ψ i = √ e e |E1 i − e−iE2 t/h̄ |E2 i .
2
E. Harmonic perturbation and Rabi oscillation (4.48)
Let us assume that the qubit was initially in the ground

A particularly interesting and practically important state, |E1 i, and that the perturbation was switched on
case concerns harmonic perturbation with small ampli- instantly. Then the wave function of the driven qubit
tude λ and resonant frequency h̄ω = E2 − E1 . Let us will take the form,
consider the situation when the harmonic perturbation
is added to the z-component of the Hamiltonian corre- λx t −iE1 t/h̄ λx t −iE2 t/h̄
sponding to a modulation of the qubit bias with a mi- |ψi = cos e |E1 i + i sin e |E2 i.
2h̄ 2h̄
crowave field. (4.49)
In the eigenbasis of the non-perturbed qubit, |E1 i, Correspondingly, the probabilities of the level occupa-
|E2 i, the Hamiltonian will take the form, tions will oscillate in time,
Ĥ = E1 σz + cos ωt (λz σz + λx σx ) , (4.41)

λx t 1 λx t
P1 = cos2 = 1 + cos ,
2h̄ 2 h̄
ǫ ∆ λx t 1

λx t

λz = λ , λx = λ . (4.42) P2 = sin2 = 1 − cos , (4.50)
E2 E2 2h̄ 2 h̄
The first perturbative term determines small periodic os-
cillations of the qubit energy splitting, while the second with small frequency ΩR = λx /h̄ ≪ ω, Rabi oscillations,
term will induce interlevel transitions. Despite the am- illustrated in Fig. 6.
plitude of the perturbation being small, λ/E2 ≪ 1, the
system will be driven far away from the initial state be-
cause of the resonance. Indeed, let us consider the wave 1
function of the driven qubit on the form
|ψi = a(t)e−iE1 t/h̄ |E1 i + b(t)e−iE2 t/h̄ |E2 i. (4.43)
Substituting this ansatz into the Schrödinger equation,
ih̄|ψ̇i = Ĥ(t) |ψi, (4.44)
we get the following equations for the coefficients,
0
ih̄ȧ = λx cos ωt ei(E1 −E2 )t/h̄ b, TR t
ih̄ḃ = λx cos ωt ei(E2 −E1 )t/h̄ a. (4.45)
(Here we have neglected a small diagonal perturbation, FIG. 6: Rabi oscillation of populations of lower level (full
line) and upper level (dashed line) at exact resonance (zero
λz .)
detuning). TR = 2π/ΩR is the period of Rabi oscillations.
Let us now focus on the slow evolution of the coeffi-
cients on the time scale of qubit precession, and average
Eqs.(4.45) over the period of the precession. This approx-
imation is known in the theory of two-level systems as
the ”rotating wave approximation (RWA)”. Then, taking F. Decoherence of qubit systems
into account the resonance condition, we get the simple
equations, Descriptions of the qubit dynamics in terms of the den-
λx λx sity matrix and Liouville equation are more general than
ih̄ȧ = b, ih̄ḃ a, (4.46) descriptions in terms of the wave function, allowing the
2 2
effects of dissipation to be included. The density ma-
whose solutions read, trix defined in Section IV B for a pure quantum state
possesses the projector operator property, ρ̂2 = ρ̂. This
a(1) (t) = b(1) (t) = e−iλx t/2h̄ , assumption can be lifted, and then the density matrix
a(2) (t) = − b(2) (t) = eiλx t/2h̄ . (4.47) describes a statistical mixture of pure states, say energy
11
eigenstates, processes, relaxation and dephasing, are referred to as

X decoherence.
ρ̂ = ρi |Ei ihEi |. (4.51) Coupling to the environment leads, in the simplest
i case, to the following modification of the Liouville
equation83,84 ,
The density matrix acquires off-diagonal elements when
the basis rotates away from the energy eigenbasis. Such 1
a mixed state cannot be represented by the vector on the ∂t ρz = − (ρz − ρ(0)
z ), (4.55)
T1
Bloch sphere; however, its evolution is still described by
the Louville equation (4.26),
i 1
∂t ρ12 = E ρ12 − ρ12 . (4.56)
ih̄∂t ρ̂ = [Ĥ, ρ̂]. (4.52) h̄ T2
The density matrix in Eq. (4.51) is the stationary solu- This equation is known as the Bloch-Redfield equa-
tion of the Liouville equation. The evolution of an arbi- tion. The first equation describes relaxation of the
trary density matrix, off-diagonal in the energy eigenba- (0)
level population to the equilibrium form, ρz =
sis, is given by the equations, −(1/2) tanh(E/2kT ), T1 being the relaxation time. The
second equation describes disappearance of the off-
ρ1 , ρ2 = const, ρ12 ∝ ei(E1 −E2 )t/h̄ . (4.53) diagonal matrix element during characteristic time T2 ,
Dissipation is included in the density matrix descrip- dephasing.
tion by extending the qubit Hamiltonian and including The relaxation time is determined by the spectral den-
interaction with an environment. The environment for sity of the environmental fluctuations at the qubit fre-
macroscopic superconducting qubits basically consists of quency,
various dissipative elements in external circuits which 1 λ2
provide bias, control, and measurement of the qubit. The = ⊥ Sφ (ω = E). (4.57)
”off-chip” parts of these circuits are usually kept at room T1 2
temperature and produce significant noise. Examples are The particular form of the spectral density depends on
the fluctuations in the current source producing magnetic the properties of the environment, which are frequently
field to bias flux qubits and, similarly, fluctuations of the expressed via the impedance (response function) of the
voltage source to bias gate of the charge qubits. Elec- environment. The most common environment consists
tromagnetic radiation from the qubit during operation is of a pure resistance, in this case, Sφ (ω) ∝ ω, at low
another dissipative mechanisms. There are also intrinsic frequencies.
microscopic mechanisms of decoherence, such as fluctuat- The dephasing time consists of two parts,
ing trapped charges in the substrate of the charge qubits,
and fluctuating trapped magnetic flux in the flux qubits, 1 1 1
= + . (4.58)
believed to produce dangerous 1/f noise. Another intrin- T2 2T1 Tφ
sic mechanism is possibly the losses in the tunnel junction
dielectric layer. Various kinds of environment are com- The first part is generated by the relaxation process,
monly modelled with an infinite set of linear oscillators while the second part results from the pure dephasing due
in thermal equilibrium (thermal bath), linearly coupled to the longitudinal coupling to the environment. This
to the qubit (Caldeira-Leggett model2,3 ). The extended pure dephasing part is proportional to the spectral den-
qubit-plus-environment Hamiltonian has the form in the sity of the fluctuation at zero frequency.
qubit energy eigenbasis82,
1 λ2
1 = z Sφ (ω = 0). (4.59)
Tφ 2
X
Ĥ = − Eσz + (λiz σz + λi⊥ σ⊥ )Xi
2 i
! There is already a vast recent literature on de-
X P̂ 2 mω 2 2
X coherence and noise in superconducting circuits,
i i i
+ , (4.54)
2m 2 qubits and detectors, and how to engineer the
i
qubits and environment to minimize decoherence and
where E = E1 − E2 . The physical effects of the two relaxation20,42,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,1
coupling terms in Eq. (4.54) are quite different. The Many of these issues will be at the focus of this article.
”transverse” coupling term proportional to λ⊥ induces
interlevel transitions and eventually leads to the relax-
ation. The ”longitudinal” coupling term proportional to V. CLASSICAL SUPERCONDUCTING
λz commutes with the qubit Hamiltonian and thus does CIRCUITS
not induce interlevel transitions. However, it randomly
changes the level spacing, which eventually leads to the In this section we describe a number of elementary su-
loss of phase coherence, dephasing. The effect of both perconducting circuits with tunnel Josephson junctions,
12
U(φ) current through the Josephson element has the form85 ,
IJ = Ic sin φ, (5.3)
where Ic is the critical Josephson current, i.e.

I the maximum non-dissipative current that may flow
J C R through the junction. The microscopic theory of
superconductivity111,112,113 gives the following equation
for the Josephson current,
φ π∆ ∆
Ic = tanh , (5.4)
FIG. 7: Current-biased Josephson junction (JJ) (left), equiv- 2eRN 2T
alent circuit (center), and effective (washboard-like) potential
where ∆ is the superconducting order parameter, and T
(right). The superconducting leads are indicated with dark
color, and the tunnel junction with light color. is the temperature. Using these relations and expressing
voltage through the superconducting phase, we can write
down Kirchhoff’s rule for the circuit,
which are used as building blocks in qubit applications. h̄ h̄
These basic circuits are: single current biased Joseph- C φ̈ + φ̇ + Ic sin φ = Ie , (5.5)
2e 2eR
son junction; single Josephson junction (JJ) included in
a superconducting loop (rf SQUID); two Josephson junc- where Ie is the bias current. This equation describes the
tions included in a superconducting loop (dc SQUID); dynamics of the phase, and it has the form of a damped
and an ultra-small superconducting island connected to non-linear oscillator. The role of the non-linear induc-
a massive superconducting electrode via tunnel Joseph- tance is here played by the Josephson element.
son junction (Single Cooper pair Box, SCB). The dissipation determines the qubit lifetime, and
therefore circuits suitable for qubit applications must
have extremely small dissipation. Let us assume zero
A. Current biased Josephson junction level of the dissipation, dropping the resistive term in
Eq. (5.5). Then the circuit dynamic equations, using the
The simplest superconducting circuit, shown in Fig. 7, mechanical analogy, can be presented in the Lagrangian
consists of a tunnel junction with superconducting elec- form, and, equivalently, in the Hamiltonian form. The
trodes, a tunnel Josephson junction, connected to a cur- circuit Lagrangian consists of the difference between the
rent source. An equivalent electrical circuit, which repre- kinetic and potential energies, the electrostatic energy of
sents the junction consists of the three lumped elements the junction capacitors playing the role of kinetic energy,
connected in parallel: the junction capacitance C, the while the energy of the Josephson current plays the role
junction resistance R, which generally differs from the of potential energy.
normal junction resistance RN and strongly depends on The kinetic energy corresponding to the first term in
temperature and applied voltage, and the Josephson ele- the Kirchhoff equation (5.5) reads,
ment associated with the tunneling through the junction. 2
h̄ C φ̇2
K(φ̇) = . (5.6)
The current-voltage relations for the junction ca- 2e 2
pacitance and resistance have standard forms, IC =
C (dV /dt), and IR = V /R. To write down a similar rela- This energy is equal to the electrostatic energy of the
tion for the Josephson element, it is necessary to intro- junction capacitor, CV 2 /2. It is convenient to introduce
duce the superconducting phase difference φ(t) across the the charging energy of the junction capacitor charged
junction, often simply referred to as the superconducting with one electron pair (Cooper pair),
phase, which is related to the voltage drop across the (2e)2
junction, EC = , (5.7)
2C
2e
Z
φ(t) = V dt + φ, (5.1) in which case Eq. (5.6) takes the form
h̄
h̄2 φ̇2
where φ is the time-independent part of the phase dif- K(φ̇) = . (5.8)
ference. The phase difference can be also related to a 4EC
magnetic flux, The potential energy corresponds to the last two terms
in Eq. (5.5), and consists of the energy of the Josephson
2e Φ
φ= Φ = 2π , (5.2) current, and the magnetic energy of the bias current,
h̄ Φ0
h̄
where Φ0 = h/2e is the magnetic flux quantum. The U (φ) = EJ (1 − cos φ) − Ie φ, (5.9)
2e
13
where EJ = h̄/2e Ic is the Josephson energy. This po- L

tential energy has a form of a washboard (see Fig. 7). In
the absence of bias current this potential corresponds to Φ C
a pendulum with the frequency of small-amplitude oscil-
lations given by J
r
2eIc R
ωJ = . (5.10)
h̄C
This frequency is known as the plasma frequency of the FIG. 8: Superconducting quantum interference device -
Josephson junction. When current bias is applied, the SQUID (left) consists of a superconducting loop (dark) in-
terrupted by a tunnel junction (light); magnetic flux Φ is sent
pendulum potential becomes tilted, its minima becom-
through the loop. Right: equivalent circuit.
ing more shallow, and finally disappearing when the bias
current becomes equal to the critical current, Ie = IC .
At this point, the plasma oscillations become unstable, U(φ)
which physically corresponds to switching to the dissipa-
tive regime and the voltage state.
Now we are ready to write down the Lagrangian for
the circuit, which is the difference between the kinetic
and potential energies. Combining Eqs. (5.8) and (5.9),
we get,
h̄2 φ̇2 h̄
L(φ, φ̇) =
4EC
− EJ (1 − cos φ) + Ie φ.
2e
(5.11)
0 φ
It is straightforward to check that the Kirchhoff equation FIG. 9: SQUID potential: the full (dark) curve corresponds
(5.5) coincides with the dynamic equation following from to integer bias flux (in units of flux quanta), while the dashed
the Lagrangian (5.11), using (light) curve corresponds to half-integer bias flux.
d ∂L ∂L
− = 0. (5.12) where Φe is the external magnetic flux threading the
dt ∂ φ̇ ∂φ
SQUID loop. The Kirchhoff rule for this circuit takes
It is important to emphasize, that the resistance of the form
the junction can only be neglected for low temperatures, h̄ h̄ h̄
and also only for slow time evolution of the phase; both C φ̈ + φ̇ + Ic sin φ + (φ − φe ) = 0. (5.14)
2e 2eR 2eL
the temperature and the characteristic frequency must be
small compared to the magnitude of the energy gap in the While neglecting the Josephson tunneling (Ic = 0), this
superconductor: T, h̄ω ≪ ∆. The physical reason behind equation describes a damped linear oscillator of a con-
this constraint concerns the amount of generated quasi- ventional LC-circuit. The resonant frequency is then,
particle excitations in the system: if the constraint is 1
fulfilled, the amount of equilibrium and non-equilibrium ωLC = √ , (5.15)
excitations will be exponentially small. Otherwise, the LC
gap in the spectrum will not play any significant role, and the (weak) damping is γ = 1/RC.
dissipation becomes large, and the advantage of the su- In the absence of dissipation, it is straightforward to
perconducting state compared to the normal conducting write down the Lagrangian of the rf-SQUID,
state will be lost.
h̄2 φ̇2 (φ − φe )2
L(φ, φ̇) = − EJ (1 − cos φ) − EL . (5.16)
4EC 2
B. rf-SQUID
The last term in this equation corresponds to the energy
of the persistent current circulating in the loop,
The rf-SQUID is the next important superconducting
circuit. It consists of a tunnel Josephson junction in- Φ20
serted in a superconducting loop, as illustrated in Fig. 8. EL = . (5.17)
4π 2 L
This circuit realizes magnetic flux bias for the Josephson
junction113 . To describe this circuit, we introduce the The potential energy U (φ) corresponding to the last two
current associated with the inductance L of the leads, terms in Eq. (5.16) is schetched in Fig. 9.
For bias flux equal to integer number of flux quanta,
h̄ 2e or φe 2πn, the potential energy of the SQUID has one ab-
IL = (φ − φe ), φe = Φe (5.13) solute minimum at φ = φe . For half integer flux quanta
2eL h̄
14
Cg
φ1 φ2 I
Φ
Vg
FIG. 11: Single Cooper pair box (SCB): a small supercon-
FIG. 10: dc SQUID consists of two tunnel junctions included ducting island connected to a bulk superconductor via a tun-
in a superconducting loop; arrows indicate the direction of nel junction; the island potential is controlled by the gate
the positive Josephson current. voltage Vg .
the potential energy has two degenerate minima, which and

correspond to the two persistent current states circulat-
ing in the SQUID loop in the opposite directions. This Ic1 − Ic2 φe
tan α = tan . (5.22)
configuration of the potential energy provides the basis Ic1 + Ic2 2
for constructing a persistent-current flux qubit (PCQ).
For a symmetric SQUID with Ic1 = Ic2 , giving α = 0,
Eq. (5.20) reduces to the form
C. dc SQUID
2Ic cos(φe /2) sin φ− = Ie . (5.23)
We now consider consider the circuit shown in Fig. 10 The potential energy generated by Eq. (5.20) has the
consisting of two Josephson junctions coupled in paral- form,
lel to a current source. The new physical feature here,
compared to a single current-biased junction, is the de-

φe h̄
pendence of the effective Josephson energy of the double U( φ) = 2EJ cos (1 − cos φ− ) − Ie φ− , (5.24)
2 2e
junction on the magnetic flux threading the SQUID loop.
which indeed is similar to the potential energy of a sin-
Let us evaluate the effective Josephson energy. Now gle current biased junction, Eq. (5.9) and Fig. 9, but
the circuit has two dynamical variables, superconducting with flux-controlled critical current. This property of
phases, φ1,2 across the two Josephson junctions. Defin- the SQUID is used in qubit applications for controlling
ing phases as shown in the figure, and applying consider- the Josephson coupling, and also for measuring the qubit
ations from Sections V A and V B we find for the static flux.
Josephson currents, The kinetic energy of the SQUID can readily be writ-
ten down noticing that it is associated with the charging
Ic1 sin φ1 − Ic2 sin φ2 = Ie , (5.18) energy of the two junction capacitances connected in par-
allel,
where Ie is the biasing current. Let us further assume
small inductance of the SQUID loop and neglect the mag- 2
φ̇2

h̄
netic energy of circulating currents. Then the total volt- K(φ̇) = (C1 + C2 ) . (5.25)
2e 2
age drop over the two junctions is zero, V1 + V2 = 0, and
therefore, φ1 + φ2 = φe , where φe is the biasing phase Thus the Lagrangian for the SQUID has a form similar
related to biasing magnetic flux. Introducing new vari- to Eq. (5.11) where EC = (2e)2 /2(C1 + C2 ),
ables,
h̄2 φ̇2

φe h̄
φ1 ± φ2 L(φ, φ̇) = − 2EJ cos (1 − cos φ) + Ie φ.
φ± = , (5.19) 4EC 2 2e
2
(5.26)
and taking into account that 2φ+ = φe , we rewrite equa-
tion (5.18) on the form,
D. Single Cooper Pair Box (SCB)
Ic (φe ) sin(φ− + α) = Ie , (5.20)
There is a particularly important Josephson junction
where circuit consisting of a small superconducting island con-
q nected via a Josephson tunnel junction to a large super-
Ic (φe ) = 2 + I 2 + I I cos φ ,
Ic1 (5.21)
c2 c1 c2 e conducting reservoir (see Fig. 11).
15
The effect of the gate electrode is only essential for the

kinetic term, and repeating previous analysis we arrive at
the following equation for the kinetic energy (assuming
I for simplicity identical junctions),
2
CΣ h̄ Cg
K(φ̇− ) = φ̇− − Vg ,
2 2e CΣ
CΣ = 2C + Cg . (5.29)
Combining this kinetic energy with the potential en-

ergy derived in previous subsection, we arrive at the La-
Vg grangian of the SCB (cf. Eq. (5.28)) where both the
charging energy and the Josephson energy can be con-
trolled,
FIG. 12: Single Cooper pair transistor (SCT): SCB with loop- 2
shape bulk electrodes; charge fluctuations on the island pro-

CΣ h̄ Cg
duces current fluctuation in the loop. L= φ̇− − Vg
2 2e CΣ

φe
+ 2EJ cos cos φ− . (5.30)
The island is capacitively coupled to another massive 2
electrode, which may act as an electrostatic gate. The
voltage source Vg controls the gate potential. In the nor-
mal state, such a circuit is named a Single Electron Box VI. QUANTUM SUPERCONDUCTING
CIRCUITS
(SEB)114 for the following reason: if the junction resis-
tance exceeds the quantum resistance Rq ≈ 26 kΩ, and
the temperature is small compared to the charging en- One may look upon the Kirchhoff rules, as well as the
ergy of the island, the system is in a Coulomb blockade circuit Lagrangians, as the equations describing the dy-
regime1,115 where the electrons can only be transferred namics of electromagnetic field in the presence of the
to the island one by one, the number of electrons on electric current. Generally, this electromagnetic field is a
the island being controlled by the gate voltage. In the quantum object, and therefore there must be a quantum
superconducting state, the same circuit is called a Sin- generalization of the equations in the previous section.
gle Cooper pair Box (SCB)116,117 ; for a review see the At first glance, the idea of quantization of an equation de-
book118 . An experimental SCB device is shown in Fig. scribing a macroscopic circuit containing a huge amount
2. In this section we consider a classical Lagrangian for of electrons may seem absurd. To convince ourselves that
the circuit. Since the structure now has two capacitances, the idea is reasonable, it is useful to recall an early ar-
one from the tunnel junction, C, and another one from gument in favor of the quantization of electron dynamics
the gate, Cg , the electrostatic term in the Hamiltonian in atoms, and to apply it to the simplest circuit, an rf-
must be reconsidered. SQUID: When the current oscillations are excited in the
Let us first evaluate the electrostatic energy of the SQUID, it works as an antenna radiating electromagnetic
SCB. It has the form, waves. Since EM waves are quantized, the same should
apply to the antenna dynamics.
CV 2 Cg (Vg − V )2 To quantize the circuit equation, we follow the conven-
+ , (5.27) tional way of canonical quantization: first we introduce
2 2
the Hamiltonian and then change the classical momen-
where V is the voltage over the tunnel junction. Then the tum to the momentum operator. The Hamiltonian is
Lagrangian can be written (omitting the constant term), related to the Lagrangian as
2 H(p, φ) = pφ̇ − L, (6.1)
CΣ h̄ Cg
L(φ, φ̇) = φ̇ − Vg − EJ (1 − cos φ), (5.28)
2 2e CΣ where p is the canonical momentum conjugated to coor-
dinate φ,
where CΣ = C + Cg .
The interferometer effect of two Josephson junctions ∂L
connected in parallel (Fig. 12) can be used to control the p= . (6.2)
∂ φ̇
Josephson energy of the single Cooper pair box. This
setup can be viewed as a flux-biased dc SQUID where For the simplest case of a single junction, Eq. (5.6), the
Josephson junctions have very small capacitances and are momentum reads,
placed very close to each other so that the island confined 2
between them has large charging energy. The gate elec- h̄
p= C φ̇. (6.3)
trode is connected to the island to control the charge. 2e
16
The so defined momentum has a simple interpretation: The commutation relation between the phase operator
it is proportional to the charge q = CV on the junction and the pair number operator has a particularly simple
capacitor, p = (h̄/2e)q, or the number n of electronic form,
pairs on the junction capacitor,
[φ, n̂] = i. (6.13)
p = h̄n. (6.4)
The meaning of the quantization procedure is the fol-
The Hamiltonian for the current-biased junction has lowing: the phase and charge dynamical variables can
the form (omitting a constant), not be exactly determined by means of physical measure-
ments; they are fundamentally random variables with the
h̄ probability of realization of certain values given by the
H = EC n2 − EJ cos φ − Ie φ. (6.5) modulus square of the wave function of a particular state,
2e
Z Z
Similarly, the Hamiltonian for the SQUID circuit has the hφi = ψ ∗ (φ) φ ψ(φ) dφ, hqi = ψ ∗ (φ) q̂ ψ(φ) dφ.
form
(6.14)
(φ − φe )2 The time evolution of the wave function is given by the
H(n, φ) = EC n2 − EJ cos φ + EL . (6.6)
2 Schrödinger equation,
The dc SQUID considered in the previous Section V C ∂ψ(φ, t)
has two degrees of freedom. The Hamiltonian can be ih̄ = Ĥψ(φ, t) (6.15)
∂t
written by generalizing Eqs. (6.5), (6.6) for the phases
φ± . In the symmetric case we have, where H̄ is the circuit quantum Hamiltonian. The ex-
plicit form of the quantum Hamiltonian for the circuits
H = EC n2+ + EC n2− − 2EJ cos φ+ cos φ− considered above, is the following:
(2φ+ − φe )2 h̄
+ EL + Ie φ− . (6.7) rf-SQUID:
2 2e
(φ − φe )2
For the SCB, Eq. (5.28), the conjugated momentum has Ĥ = EC n̂2 − EJ cos φ + EL ; (6.16)
the form, 2
Current biased JJ:
h̄CΣ h̄ Cg
p= φ̇ − Vg , (6.8) h̄
2e 2e CΣ Ĥ = EC n̂2 − EJ cos φ + Ie φ; (6.17)
2e
and the Hamiltonian reads,
dc-SQUID:
2
H = EC (n − ng ) − EJ cos φ, (6.9)
Ĥ = EC n̂2+ + EC n̂2− − 2EJ cos φ+ cos φ−
where now EC = (2e)2 /2CΣ , and n = p/h̄ has the mean- (2φ+ − φe )2 h̄
+ EL + Ie φ− . (6.18)
ing of the number of electron pairs (Cooper pairs) on the 2 2e
island electrode. ng = −Cg Vg /2e is the charge on the
gate capacitor (in units of Cooper pairs (2e)), which can and finally the single Cooper pair box (SCB):
be tuned by the gate potential, and which therefore plays
the role of external controlling parameter. Ĥ = EC (n̂ − ng )2 − EJ cos φ, (6.19)
The quantum Hamiltonian results from Eq. (6.2) by For junctions connecting macroscopically large elec-
substituting the classical momentum p for the differential trodes, the charge on the junction capacitor is a con-
operator, tinuous variable. This implies that no specific boundary
∂ conditions on the wave function are imposed. The sit-
p̂ = −ih̄ . (6.10) uation is different for the SCB: in this case one of the
∂φ electrodes, the island, is supposed to be small enough
Similarly, one can define the charge operator, to show pronounced charging effects. If tunneling is for-
bidden, electrons are trapped on the island, and their
∂ number is always integer (the charge quantization con-
q̂ = − 2ei , (6.11) dition). However, there is a difference between the ener-
∂φ
gies of even and odd numbers of electrons on the island:
and the operator of the pair number, while an electron pair belongs to the superconducting
condensate and has the additional energy EC , a single
∂ electron forms an excitation and thus its energy consists
n̂ = − i . (6.12) of the charging energy, EC /2 plus the excitation energy,
∂φ
17
∆ (parity effect)116 . To prevent the appearance of indi- resonance width, γ = 1/RC compared to the resonance
vidual electrons on the island and to provide the SCB frequency, γ ≪ ωLC . It is intuitively clear that the quan-
regime, the condition ∆ ≫ EC /2 must be fulfilled. Thus tization effect will be destroyed when the level broaden-
when the tunneling is switched on, only Josephson tuning exceeds the level spacing. For quantum behavior of
neling is allowed since it transfers Cooper pairs and the the circuit, narrow resonances, γ ≪ ωLC , are therefore
number of electrons on the island must change pairwise, essential. However, even in this case it is hard to ob-
n− = integer. In order to provide such a constraint, peri- serve the quantum dynamics in linear circuits such as
odic boundary conditions on the SCB wave function are LC-resonators123 because the expectation values of the
imposed, linear oscillator follow the classical time evolution. Thus
the presence of non-linear circuit elements is essential.
ψ(φ) = ψ(φ + 2π). (6.20) The linear oscillator provides the simplest example of
This implies that arbitrary state of the SCB is a super- a quantum energy level spectrum: it only consists of dis-
position of the charge states with integer amount of the crete levels with equal distance between the levels. The
Cooper pairs, level spectrum of the Josephson junction associated with
X a pendulum potential is more complicated. Firstly, be-
ψ(φ) = an einφ . (6.21) cause of the non-linearity (non-parabolic potential wells),
n the energy spectrum is non-equidistant (anharmonic),
The uncertainty of the dynamical variables are not im- the high-energy levels being closer to each other than the
portant as long as the relative mean deviations of dy- low-energy levels. Moreover, for energies larger than the
namical variables are small, i.e. the amplitudes of the amplitude of the potential (top of the barrier), EJ , the
quantum fluctuations are small. In this case, the particle spectrum is continuous. Secondly, one has to take into
behaves as a classical particle. It is known from quan- account the possibility of a particle tunneling between
tum mechanics, that this corresponds to large mass of neighboring potential wells: this will produce broadening
the particle, in our case, to large junction capacitance. of the energy levels into energy bands. The level broad-
Thus we conclude that the quantum effects in the circuit ening is determined by the overlap of the wave function
dynamics are essential when the junction capacitances tails under the potential barriers, and it must be small
are sufficiently small. The qualitative criterion is that for levels lying very close to the bottom of the potential
the charging energy must be larger than, or comparable wells. Such a situation may only exist if the level spac-
to, the Josephson energy of the junction, EC ∼ EJ . ing, given by the plasma frequency of the tunnel junction
Typical Josephson energies of the tunnel junctions in is much smaller than the Josephson energy, h̄ωJ ≪ EJ ,
qubit circuits are of the order of a few degrees Kelvin i.e. when EC ≪ EJ . This almost classical regime with
or less. Bearing in mind that the insulating layers of Josephson tunneling dominating over charging effects, is
the junctions have the thickness of few atomic distances, called the phase regime, because phase fluctuations are
and modeling the junction as a planar capacitor, the esti- small and the superconducting phase is well defined. In
mated junction area should be smaller than a few square the opposite case, EC ≫ EJ , the lowest energy level lies
micrometers to observe the circuit quantum dynamics. well above the potential barrier, and this situation corre-
One of most important consequences of the quantum sponds to wide energy bands separated by small energy
dynamics is quantization of the energy of the circuit. Let gaps. In this case, the wave function far from the gap
us consider, for example, the LC circuit. In the classical edges can be well approximated with a plane wave,
case, the amplitude of the plasma oscillations has con- iqφ
tinuous values. In the quantum case the amplitude of ψq (φ) = exp . (6.23)
2e
oscillation can only have certain discrete values defined
through the energy spectrum of the oscillator. The linear This wave function corresponds to an eigenstate of the
oscillator is well studied in the quantum mechanics, and charge operator with well defined value of the charge, q.
its energy spectrum is very well known, Such a regime with small charge fluctuations is called the
charge regime.
En = h̄ωLC (n + 1/2), n = 0, 1, 2, ... (6.22)
One may ask, why is quantum dynamics never ob-
served in ordinary electrical circuits? After all, in high- VII. BASIC QUBITS
frequency applications, frequencies up to THz are avail-
able, which corresponds to a distance between the quan- The quantum superconducting circuits considered
tized oscillator levels of order 10K, which can be observed above contain a large number of energy levels, while for
at sufficiently low temperature. For an illuminative dis- qubit operation only two levels are required. Moreover,
cussion on this issue see the paper by Martinis, Devoret these two qubit levels must be well decoupled from the
and Clarke123 . According to Ref. 2 it is the dissipation other levels in the sense that transitions between qubit
that kills quantum fluctuations: as known from classi- levels and the environment must be much less probable
cal mechanics, the dissipation (normal resistance) broad- than the transitions between the qubit levels itself. Typi-
ens the resonance, and good resonators must have small cally that means that the qubit should involve a low-lying
18
pair of levels, well separated from the spectrum of higher

levels, and not being close to resonance with any other
transitions.
A. Single Josephson Junction (JJ) qubit
The simplest qubit realization is a current biased JJ

with large Josephson energy compared to the charging
energy. In the classical regime, the particle representing
the phase either rests at the bottom of one of the wells of
the ”washboard” potential (Fig. 7), or oscillates within
the well. Due to the periodic motion, the average voltage FIG. 13: Quantized energy levels in the potential of a current
biased Josephson Junction
across the junction is zero, φ̇ = 0. Strongly excited states,
where the particle may escape from the well, correspond
√
to the dissipative regime with non-zero average voltage where Umax = 2 2(Φ0 /2π)(1 − Ie /Ic )3/2 is the height of
across the junction, φ̇ 6= 0. the potential barrier at given bias current.
In the quantum regime described by the Hamiltonian
(6.5),
B. Charge qubits
h̄
Ĥ = EC n̂2 − EJ cos φ − Ie φ, (7.1)
2e 1. Single Cooper pair Box - SCB
particle confinement, rigorously speaking, is impossi-

ble because of macroscopic quantum tunneling (MQT) An elementary charge qubit can be made with the SCB
through the potential barrier, see Fig. 13. However, operating in the charge regime, EC ≫ EJ . Neglecting
the probability of MQT is small and the tunneling may the Josephson coupling implies the complete isolation of
be neglected if the particle energy is close to the bot- the island of the SCB, with a specific number of Cooper
tom of the local potential well, i.e. when E ≪ EJ . To pairs trapped on the island. Correspondingly, the eigen-
find the conditions for such a regime, it is convenient functions,
to approximate the potential with a parabolic function,
EC (n̂ − ng )2 |ni = En |ni, (7.4)
U (φ) ≈ (1/2)EJ cos φ0 (φ−φ0 )2 , where φ0 corresponds to
the potential minimum, EJ sin φ0 = (h̄/2e)Ie . Then the correspond to the charge states n = 0, 1, 2..., with the en-
lowest energy levels, Ek = h̄ωp (k + 1/2) are determined ergy spectrum En = EC (n − ng )2 , as shown in Fig. 14.
by the plasma frequency, ωp = 21/4 ωJ (1 − Ie /Ic )1/4 . It The ground state energy oscillates with the gate voltage,
then follows that the levels are close to the bottom of the and the number of Cooper pairs in the ground state in-
potential if EC ≪ EJ , i.e. when the Josephson junction creases. There are, however, specific values of the gate
is in the phase regime, and moreover, if the bias current voltage, e.g. ng = 1/2 where the charge states |0i and
is not too close to the critical value, Ie < Ic . |1i become degenerate. Switching on a small Josephson
It is essential for qubit operation that the spectrum in coupling will then lift the degeneracy, forming a tight
the well is not equidistant. Then the two lowest energy two-level system.
levels, k = 0, 1 can be employed for the qubit operation. The qubit Hamiltonian is derived by projecting the
Truncating the full Hilbert space of the junction to the full Hamiltonian (6.19) on the two charge states, |0i, |1i,
subspace spanned by these two states, |0i and |1i, we leading to
may write the qubit Hamiltonian on the form,
1
1 ĤSCB = − (ǫ σz + ∆ σx ), (7.5)
Hq = − ǫσz , (7.2) 2
2
where ǫ = EC (1 − 2ng ), and ∆ = EJ . The qubit level
where ǫ = E1 − E0 . energies are then given by the equation
The interlevel distance is controlled by the bias cur-
1
q
rent. When bias current approaches the critical cur- E1,2 = ∓ 2 (1 − 2n )2 + E 2 ,
EC (7.6)
g J
rent, level broadening due to MQT starts to play a role, 2
Ek → Ek + iΓk /2. The MQT rate for the lowest level is
the interlevel distance being controlled by the gate volt-
given by82
age. At the degeneracy point, ng = 1/2, the diag-
s onal part of the qubit Hamiltonian vanishes, the lev-
52ωp Umax 7.2Umax els being separated by the Josephson energy, EJ , and
ΓMQT = exp − , (7.3)
2π h̄ωp h̄ωp the qubit eigenstates corresponding to the cat states,
19
current is distributed between the two junctions. The

EC answer to this question is apparently equivalent to eval-
uating the persistent current circulating in the SQUID
loop. This current was neglected so far because the as-
sociated induced flux φ̃ = 2φ+ − φe was assumed to be
frozen, φ̃ = 0, in the limit of infinitely small SQUID in-
ductance, L = 0. Let us now lift this assumption and
allow fluctuation of the induced flux; the Hamiltonian
0 ng will then take the form (6.7), in which a gate potential is
included in the charging term of the SCB, and the term
containing external current is dropped,
n = −1 0 1
ĤSCT = EC (n̂− − ng )2 + EC n̂2+
(2φ+ − φe )2
−2EJ cos φ+ cos φ− + EL . (7.7)
2
FIG. 14: Single Cooper pair box (SCB): charging energy (up-
per panel), and charge on the island (lower panel) vs gate (n̂+ = −i∂/∂φ+ ). For small but non-zero inductance,
potential. Washed-out onsets of the charge steps indicate the amplitude of the induced phase is small, φ̃ = 2φ+ −
quantum fluctuations of the charge on the island. φe ≪ 1, and the cosine term containing φ+ can be ex-
panded, yielding the equation
E ĤSCT = ĤSCB (φ− ) + Ĥosc (φ̃) + Ĥint . (7.8)
ĤSCB (φ− ) is the SCB Hamiltonian (6.19) with the flux

∆/2 dependent Josephson energy, EJ (φe ) = 2EJ cos(φe /2).
Ĥosc (φ̃) describes the linear oscillator associated with the
variable φ̃,
0 ∋ φ̃2
Ĥosc (φ̃) = 4EC ñˆ2 + EL , (7.9)
2
and the interaction term reads,

φe
Ĥint = EJ sin cos(φ− ) φ̃ . (7.10)
2
FIG. 15: Energy spectrum of the SCB (solid lines): it results
from hybridization of the charge states (dashed lines).
Thus, the circuit consists of the non-linear oscillator of
the SCB linearly coupled to the linear oscillator of the
SQUID loop. This coupling gives the possibility to mea-
sure the charge state of the SCB by measuring the per-
|E1 i, |E2 i = |0i ∓ |1i. For theses states, the average
sistent currents and the induced flux.
charge on the island is zero, while it changes to ∓2e far
Truncating Eq. (7.8) we finally arrive at the Hamil-
from the degeneracy point, where the qubit eigenstates
tonian which is formally equivalent to the spin-oscillator
approach pure charge states.
Hamiltonian,
The SCB was first experimentally realized by Lafarge
et al.117 , observing the Coulomb staircase with steps of 1
2e and the superposition of the charge states, see also13 . ĤSCT = − (ǫσz + ∆(φe )σx ) + λφ̃σx + Hosc . (7.11)
2
Realization of the first charge qubit by manipulation of
the SCB and observation of Rabi oscillations was done In this equation, ∆(φe ) = 2EJ cos(φe /2), and λ =
by Nakamura et al.1,119,120 , and further investigated the- EJ sin(φe /2).
oretically by Choi et al.121 .
C. Flux qubit
2. Single Cooper pair Transistor - SCT
1. Quantum rf-SQUID
In the SCB, charge fluctuations on the island gener-
ate fluctuating current between the island and large elec- An elementary flux qubit can be constructed from an
trode. In the two-junction setup discused at the end of rf-SQUID operating in the phase regime, EJ ≫ EC . Let
Section V D, an interesting question concerns how the us consider the Hamiltonian (6.6) at φe = π, i.e. at half
20
E subspace spanned by these two levels. The starting point

of the truncation procedure is to approximate the double
well potential with Ul and Ur , as shown in Fig. 17, to
confine the particle to the left or to the right well, respec-
tively. The corresponding ground state wave functions |li
∆ and |ri satisfy the stationary Schrödinger equation,
0 φ
Ĥl |li = El |li, Ĥr |ri = Er |ri. (7.14)
FIG. 16: Double-well potential of the rf-SQUID with de-

The averaged induced flux for these states, φl and φr
generate quantum levels in the wells (black). Macroscopic have opposite signs, manifesting opposite directions of
quantum tunneling (MQT) through the potential barrier in- the circulating persistent currents. Let us allow the bias
troduces a level splitting ∆, and the lowest level pair forms a flux to deviate slightly from the half integer value, φe =
qubit. π + f , so that the ground state energies are not equal
but still close to each other, El ≈ Er . The tunneling will
hybridize the levels, and we can approximate the true
U(φ) eigenfunction, |Ei,
Ur Ul Ĥ|Ei = E|Ei, (7.15)
with a superposition,
|Ei = a|li + b|ri. (7.16)
0 φ The qubit Hamiltonian is given by the matrix elements

of the full Hamiltonian, Eq. (7.15), with respect to the
FIG. 17: Flux qubit: truncation of the junction Hamiltonian; states |li and |ri,
dashed lines indicate potentials of the left and right wells with
ground energy levels. Hll = El + hl|U − Ul |li,
Hrr = Er + hr|U − Ur |ri,
integer bias magnetic flux. The potential, U (φ), shown Hrl = El hr|li + hr|U − Ul |li. (7.17)
in Fig. 16 has two identical wells with equal energy levels
when MQT between the wells is neglected (phase regime, In the diagonal matrix elements, the second terms are
ωJ ≪ EJ ). These levels are connected with current fluc- small because the wave functions are exponentially small
tuations within each well around averaged values cor- in the region where the deviation of the approximated
responding to clockwise and counterclockwise persistent potential from the true one is appreciable. The off di-
currents circulating in the loop (the flux states). Let agonal matrix element is exponentially small because of
us consider the lowest, doubly degenerate, energy level. small overlap of the ground state wave functions in the
When the tunneling is switched on, the levels split, and left and right wells, and also here the main contribution
a tight two-level system is formed with the level spacing comes from the first term. Since the wave functions can
determined by the MQT rate, which is much smaller than be chosen real, the truncated Hamiltonian is symmet-
the level spacing in the well. In the case that the tunnel- ric, Hlr = Hrl . Then introducing ǫ = Er − El , and
ing barrier is much smaller than the Josephson energy, ∆/2 = Hrl , we arrive at the Hamiltonian of the flux
the potential in Eq. (5.9) can be approximated, qubit,
(φ − φe )2 1
U (φ) = EJ (1 − cos φ) + EL Ĥ = − (ǫσz + ∆σx ). (7.18)
2 ! 2
2
φ̃ 1+ε 4 The Hamiltonian of the flux qubit is formally equiva-
≈ EL −ε − f φ̃ + φ̃ , (7.12)
2 24 lent to that of the charge qubit, Eq. (7.5), but the phys-
ical meaning of the terms is rather different. The flux
where φ̃ = φ − π, f = φe − π, and where qubit Hamiltonian is written in the flux basis, i.e. the
basis of the states with certain averaged induced flux, φl
EJ and φr (rather than the charge basis of the charge qubit).
ε= − 1 ≪ 1. (7.13)
EL The energy spectrum of the flux qubit is obviously the
same as that of the charge qubit,
determines the height of the tunnel barrier.
The qubit Hamiltonian is derived by projecting the 1p 2
whole Hilbert space of the full Hamiltonian (6.6) on the E1,2 = ∓ ǫ + ∆2 , (7.19)
2
21
FIG. 18: Persistent current flux qubit (PCQ) with 3 junctions.

The side junctions are identical, while the central junction has
smaller area.
as shown in Fig. 15. However, for the flux qubit the

dashed lines indicate persistent current states in the ab-
sence of macroscopic tunneling, and the current degener-
acy point (ǫ = 0) corresponds to a half-integer bias flux.
The energy levels are controlled by the bias magnetic flux
(instead of the gate voltage for the charge qubit).
At the flux degeneracy point, f = 0 (φe = π), the
level spacing is determined by the small amplitude of FIG. 19: Potential energy landscape U (φ1 , φ2 ) = U (φ+ , φ− )
tunneling through macroscopic potential barrier, and the of the Delft qubit as a function of the two independent phase
wave functions correspond to the cat states, which are variables φ1 and φ2 , or equivalently, φ+ (horizontal axis) and
φ− (vertical axis). Black represents the bottom of the poten-
equally weighted superpositions of the flux states. Far
tial wells, and white the top of the potential barriers. The
from the degeneracy point, the qubit states are almost qubit double-well potential is determined by the potential
pure flux states. landscape centered around the origin in the horizontal direc-
The possibility to achieve quantum coherence of tion, and typically has the shape shown in Fig. 16. Courtesy
macroscopic current states in an rf-SQUID with a small of C.H. van der Wal.
capacitance Josephson junction was first pointed out in
1984 by Leggett122 . However, successful experimental
observation of the effect was achieved only in 2000 by
Friedman et al.8 . To explain the idea, let us consider the potential energy.
The three phases are not independent and satisfy the
relation φ1 + φ2 + φ3 = φe . Let us suppose that the qubit
2. 3-junction SQUID - persistent current qubit (PCQ) is biased at half integer flux quantum, φe = π. Then
introducing new variables, φ± = (φ1 ± φ2 )/2, we have
The main drawback of the flux qubit with a single
Josephson junction (rf-SQUID) described above concerns U (φ+ , φ− ) = −EJ [2 cos φ− cos φ+ − (1/2 + ε) cos 2φ+ ].
the large inductance of the qubit loop, the energy of (7.21)
which must be comparable to the Josephson energy to The potential landscape is shown in Fig. 19, and the
form the required double-well potential profile. This im- qubit potential consists of the double well structure near
plies large size of the qubit loop, which makes the qubit the points (φ+ , φ− ) = (0, 0). An approximate form of
vulnerable to dephasing by magnetic fluctuations of the the potential energy is given by
environment. One way to overcome this difficulty was
pointed out by Mooij et al.6 , replacing the large loop in-
φ4

ductance by the Josephson inductance of an additional U (φ+ , 0) ≈ EJ −2εφ2+ + + . (7.22)
tunnel junction, as shown in Fig. 18, The design employs 4
three tunnel junctions connected in series in a supercon-
ducting loop. The inductive energy of the loop is chosen
to be much smaller than the Josephson energy of the Each well in this structure corresponds to clock- and
junctions. The two junctions are supposed to be identi- counterclockwise currents circulating in the loop. The
cal while the third junction is supposed to have smaller amplitude of the structure is given by the parameter
area, and therefore smaller Josephson and larger charging ǫEJ , and for ǫ ≪ 1 the tunneling between these wells
energy. The Hamiltonian has the form, dominates. Thus this qubit is qualitatively similar to
the single-junction qubit described above, but the quan-
Ĥ = EC [n̂21 + n̂22 + n̂23 /(1/2 + ε)] − titative parameters are different and can be significantly
EJ [cos φ1 + cos φ2 + (1/2 + ε) cos φ3 ]. (7.20) optimized.
22
D. Potential qubits ∆ 1
The superconducting qubits that have been discussed

in previous sections exploit the fundamental quantum un-
certainty between electric charge and magnetic flux. This E 0 2 R∆
uncertainty appears already in the dynamics of a single
Josephson junction (JJ), which is the basis for elementary
JJ qubits. There are however other possibilities. One of
them is to delocalize quantum information in a JJ net-
work by choosing global quantum states of the network
as a computational basis. Recently, some rather com-
∆ −1
0 φ 2π
0 1 2
plicated JJ networks have been discussed, which have

the unusual property of degenerate ground state, which
might be employed for efficient qubit protection against FIG. 20: Energy spectrum of microscopic bound Andreev lev-
els; the level splitting is determined by the conact reflectivity.
decoherence124,125 .
An alternative possibility of further miniaturization
of superconducting qubits could be to replace the stan- net Josephson current is negligibly small.
dard Josephson junction by a quantum point contact In QPCs, the Josephson effect is associated with mi-
(QPC), using the microscopic conducting modes in the croscopic Andreev levels, localized in the junction area,
JJ QPC, the bound Andreev states, as a computational which transport Cooper pairs from one junction electrode
basis, allowing control of intrinsic decoherence inside the to the other127,128 . As shown in Fig. 20, the Andreev
junction105,126 . levels, two levels per conducting mode, lie within the su-
To explain the physics of this type of qubit, let us perconducting gap and have the phase-dependent energy
consider an rf SQUID (see Fig. 8) with a junction that spectrum,
has such a small cross section that the quantization of
electronic modes in the (transverse) direction perpendic-
q
ular to the current flow becomes pronounced. In such a Ea = ±∆ cos2 (φ/2) + R sin2 (φ/2), (7.23)
junction, quantum point contact (QPC), the Josephson
current is carried by a number of independent conduct- (here ∆ is the superconducting order parameter in the
ing electronic modes, each of which can be considered an junction electrodes). For very small reflectivity, R ≪ 1,
elementary microscopic Josephson junction characterized and phase close to π (half integer flux bias) the An-
by its own transparency. The number of modes is propor- dreev two-level system is well isolated from the contin-
tional to the ratio of the junction cross section and the uum states. The expectation value for the Josephson
area of the atomic cell (determined by the Fermi wave- current carried by the level is determined by the Andreev
length) of the junction material. In atomic-sized QPCs level spectrum,
with only a few conducting modes, the Josephson current 2e dEa
can be appreciable if the conducting modes are transpar- Ia = , (7.24)
h̄ dφe
ent (open modes). If the junction is fully transparent
(reflectivity R = 0) then current is a well defined quan- and it has different sign for the upper and lower level.
tity. This will correspond to a persistent current with Since the state of the Andreev two-level system is deter-
certain direction circulating in the qubit loop. On the mined by the phase difference and related to the Joseph-
other hand, for a finite reflectivity (R 6= 0), the electronic son current, the state can be manipulated by driving
back scattering will induce hybridization of the persistent magnetic flux through the SQUID loop, and read out
current states giving rise to strong quantum fluctuation by measuring circulating persistent current129,130 .
of the current. This microscopic physics underlines recent proposal for
Such a quantum regime is distinctly different from the Andreev level qubit105,126 . The qubit is similar to the
macroscopic quantum coherent regime of the flux qubit macroscopic flux qubits with respect to how it is manip-
described in Section VII, where the quantum hybridiza- ulated and measured, but the great difference is that the
tion of the persistent current states is provided by charge quantum information is stored in the microscopic quan-
fluctuations on the junction capacitor. Clearly, charging tum states. This difference is reflected in the more com-
effects will not play any essential role in quantum point plex form of the qubit Hamiltonian, which consists of
contacts, and the leading role belongs to the microscopic the two-level Hamiltonian of the Andreev levels strongly
mechanism of electron back scattering. This mechanism coupled to the quantum oscillator describing phase fluc-
is only pronounced in quantum point contacts: in classi- tuations,
cal (large area) contacts, such as junctions of macroscopic
√ √

qubits with areas of several square micrometers, the cur- φ φ
Ĥ = ∆ e−iσx R φ/2 cos σz + R sin σy + Ĥosc [φ],
rent is carried by a large number (> 104 ) of statistically 2 2
independent conducting modes, and fluctuation of the (7.25)
23
Ĥosc [φ] = EC n̂ + (EL /2)(φ − φe )2 . Comparing this equa-

tion with e.g. the SCT Hamiltonian (7.8), we find that
the truncated Hamiltonian of the SCB is replaced here
by the Andreev level Hamiltonian.
VIII. QUBIT READOUT AND MEASUREMENT

OF QUANTUM INFORMATION
In this section we present a number of proposed, and

realized, schemes for measuring quantum states of vari-
ous superconducting qubits.
A. Readout: why, when and how? FIG. 21: Measurement of the phase qubit. Long-living levels
form the qubit, while the dashed line indicates a leaky level
with large energy.
As already mentioned in Section III D, the ultimate
objective of a qubit readout device is to distinguish the
eigenstates of a qubit in a single measurement ”without
destroying the qubit”, a so called ”single-shot” quantum eigenstate. Then the value is predetermined and the
non-demolition (QND) projective measurement. This qubit left in the eigenstate (Stern-Gerlach-style).
objective is essential for several reasons: state prepara- On the other hand, to extract the desired final result it
tion for computation, readout for error correction during may be necessary to create an ensemble of calculations to
the calculation, and readout of results at the end of the be able to perform a complete measurement to determine
calculation. Strictly speaking, the QND property is only the expectation values of variables of interest, performing
needed if the qubit must be left in an eigenstate after quantum state tomography131.
the readout. In a broader sense, readout of a specific
qubit must of course not destroy any other qubits in the
system. B. Direct qubit measurement
It must be carefully noted that one cannot ”read out
the state of a qubit” in a single measurement - this is pro- Direct destructive measurement of the qubit can be il-
hibited by quantum mechanics. It takes repeated mea- lustrated with the example of a single JJ (phase) qubit,
surements on a large number of replicas of the quantum Section VII A. After the manipulation has been per-
state to characterize the state of the qubit (Eq. (3.1)) - formed (e.g. Rabi oscillation), the qubit is left in a su-
”quantum tomography”131. perposition of the upper and lower energy states. To
The measurement connects the qubit with the open determine the probability of the upper state, one slowly
system of the detector, which collapses the combined sys- increases the bias current until it reaches such a value
tem of qubit and measurement device to one of its com- that the upper energy level equals Or gets close to) the
mon eigenstates. If the coupling between the qubit and top of the potential barrier, see Fig. 21. Then the junc-
the detector is weak, the eigenstates are approximately tion, being at the upper energy level, will switch from the
those of the qubit. In general however, one must con- Josephson branch to the dissipative branch, and this can
sider the eigenstates of the total qubit-detector system be detected by measuring the finite average voltage ap-
and manipulate gate voltages and fluxes such that the pearing across the junction (voltage state). If the qubit
readout measurement is performed in a convenient en- is in the lower energy state the qubit will remain on the
ergy eigenbasis (see e.g.42,79 ). Josephson branch and a finite voltage will not be de-
Even under ideal conditions, a single-shot measure- tected (zero-voltage state). An alternative method to
ment can only determine the population of an eigenstate activate switching30 is to apply an rf signal with reso-
if the system is prepared in an eigenstate: then the an- nant frequency (instead of tilting the junction potential)
swer will always be either ”0” or ”1”. If an ideal single- in order to excite the upper energy level and to induce the
shot measurement is used to read out a qubit superpo- switching event, see Fig. 21 (also illustrating a standard
sition state, e.g. during Rabi oscillation, then again the readout method in atomic physics).
answer can only be ”0” or ”1”. To determine the qubit It is obvious that, in this example, the qubit upper
population (i.e. the |a1 |2 and |a2 |2 probabilities) requires energy state is always destroyed by the measurement.
repetition of the measurement to obtain the expectation Single-shot measurement is possible provided the MQT
value. During the intermediate stages of quantum com- rate for the lower energy level is sufficiently small to
putation one must therefore not perform a measurement prevent the junction switching during the measurement
on a qubit unless one knows, because of the design and time. It is also essential to keep a sufficiently small rate of
timing of the algorithm, that this qubit is in an energy interlevel transitions induced by fluctuations of the bias
24
P
t << t ms t < t ms t = t ms
SCB
0 t I(n0x ) t I(n1x ) m
SET
FIG. 23: Probability distributions P of counted electrons as
functions of time after the turning on the measurement beam
of electrons. Courtesy of G. Johansson, Chalmers.
Vg
capacitively coupled to a charge qubit has also been ex-
tensively discussed in literature132,139,140,141,142,143,144 .
FIG. 22: Single Electron Transistor (SET) capacitively cou- The induced charge on the SET gate depends on the
pled to an SCB. state of the qubit, affecting the SET working point
and determining the conductivity and the average cur-
rent. The development of the probability distributions
current and by the current ramping. of counted electrons with time is shown in Fig. 23.
A similar kind of direct destructive measurement was As the number of counted electrons grows, the distribu-
performed by Nakamura et al.1 to detect the state of the tions separate and become distinguishable, the distance
charge qubit. The qubit operation was performed at the between
√ the peaks developing as ∼ N and the width
charge degeneracy point, ug = 1, where the level splitting ∼ N . Detailed investigations144 show that the two
is minimal. An applied gate voltage then shifted the SCB electron-number probability distributions correlate with
working point (Fig. 15), inducing a large level splitting the probability of finding the qubit in either of two energy
of the pure charge states |0i and |1i (the measurement levels. The long-time development depends on the inten-
preparation stage). In this process the upper |1i charge sity and frequency distribution of the back-action noise
state went above the threshold for Cooper pair decay, from the electron current. With very weak detector back
creating two quasi-particles which immediately tunnel action, the qubit can relax to |0i during the natural re-
out via the probe junction into the leads. These quasi- laxation time T1 . With very strong back-action noise at
particles were measured as a contribution to the classical the qubit frequency, the qubit may become saturated in
charge current by repeating the experiment many times. a 50/50 mixed state.
Obviously, this type of measurement is also destructive.
D. Measurement via coupled oscillator
C. Measurement of charge qubit with SET
Another method of qubit read out that has attracted
much attention concerns the measurement of the proper-
Non-destructive measurement of the charge qubit has ties of a linear or non-linear oscillator coupled to a qubit.
been implemented by connecting the qubit capacitively This method is employed for the measurement of induced
to a SET electrometer69 . The idea of this method is to magnetic flux and persistent current in the loop of flux
use a qubit island as an additional SET gate (Fig. 22), qubits and charge-phase qubits, as well as for charge mea-
controlling the dc current through the SET depending surement on charge qubits. With this method, the qubit
on the state of the qubit. When the measurement is to affects the characteristics of the coupled oscillator, e.g.
be performed, a driving voltage is applied to the SET, changes the shape of the oscillator potential, after which
and the dc current is measured. Another version of the the oscillator can be probed to detect the changes. There
measurement procedure is to apply rf bias to the SET are two versions of the method: resonant spectroscopy of
(rf-SET69,133,134,135 ) in Fig. 22, and to measure the dis- a linear tank circuit/cavity, and threshold detection us-
sipative or inductive response. In both cases the trans- ing biased JJ or SQUID magnetometer.
missivity will show two distinct values correlated with The first method uses the fact that the resonance fre-
the two states of the qubit. Yet another version has re- quency of a linear oscillator weakly coupled to the qubit
cently been developed by the NEC group136 to perform undergoes a shift depending on the qubit state. The
single-shot readout: the Cooper pair on the SCB island effect is most easily explained by considering the SCT
then tunnels out onto a trap island (instead of the leads) Hamiltonian, Eq. (11.1),
used as a gate to control the current through the SET.
The physics of the SET-based readout has been exten- 1
sively studied theoretically (see42,137,138 and references ĤSCT = − (ǫσz + ∆(φe )σx ) + λ(φe )φ̃σx
2
therein). A similar idea of controlling the transmission 1
of a quantum point contact (QPC) (instead of an SET) +4EC ñˆ2 + EL φ̃2 . (8.1)
2
25
Let us proceed to the qubit energy basis, in which casee Vout (t) u(t)
the
√ qubit Hamiltonian takes the form −(E/2)σz , E =
ǫ2 + ∆2 . The interaction term in the qubit eigenbasis
will consist of two parts, the longitudinal part, λz φ̃σz ,
λz = (∆/E)λ, and the transverse part, λx φ̃σx , λx =
(ǫ/E)λ. In the limit of weak coupling the transverse part SCB
of interaction is the most essential. In the absence of
interaction (φe = 0), the energy spectrum of the qubit +
oscillator system is
E 1
En∓ = ∓ + h̄ω(n + ), (8.2)
2 2
√
where h̄ω = 8EC EL is the plasma frequency of the
oscillator. The effect of weak coupling is enhanced in Vg
the vicinity of the resonance, when the oscillator plasma
frequency is close to the qubit level spacing, h̄ω ≈ E. Let
us assume, however, that the coupling energy is smaller FIG. 24: SCT qubit coupled to a readout oscillator. The
than the deviation from the resonance, λx ≪ |h̄ω − E|. qubit is operated by input pulses u(t). The readout oscillator
Then the spectrum of the interacting system in the lowest is controlled and driven by ac microwave pulses Vg (t). The
perturbative order will acquire a shift, output signal will be ac voltage pulses Vout(t), the amplitude
or phase of which may discriminate between the qubit ”0”
λ2x h̄ω and ”1” states.
δEn± = ± (n + 1) . (8.3)
EL (h̄ω − E)
This shift is proportional to the first power of the oscilla-
tor quantum number n, which implies that the oscillator
frequency acquires a shift (the frequency of the qubit is
also shifted145,146,147,148,149 ). Since the sign of the oscil-
lator frequency shift is different for the different qubit
states, it is possible to distinguish the state of the qubit
by probing this frequency shift.
SCT Ib
In the case of the SCT, the LC oscillator is a generic
part of the circuit. It is equally possible to use an addi- Vg
tional LC oscillator inductively coupled to a qubit. This
type of device has been described by Zorin71 for SCT
readout, and recently implemented for flux qubits by
Il’ichev et al.27,39 . FIG. 25: SCT qubit coupled to a JJ readout quantum oscil-
Figure 24 illustrates another case, namely a charge lator. The JJ oscillator is controlled by dc/ac current pulses
qubit capacitively coupled to an oscillator, again pro- Ib (t) adding to the circulating currents in the loop due to the
viding energy resolution for discriminating the two qubit SCT qubit. The output will be dc/ac voltage pulses Vout (t)
levels150 . Analysis of this circuit is similar to the one dis- discriminating between the qubit ”0” and ”1” states.
cussed below in the context of qubit coupling via oscilla-
tors, Section IX. The resulting Hamiltonian is similar to
Eq. (9.20), namely, inserted in the qubit loop, as shown in Fig. 25.
When the measurement of the qubit state is to be per-
Ĥ = ĤSCB + λσy φ + Ĥosc . (8.4) formed, a bias current is sent through the additional junc-
In comparison with the case of the SCT, Eq. (8.4) has tion. This current is then added to the qubit-state depen-
a different form of the coupling term, which does not dent persistent current circulating in the qubit loop. If
change during rotation to the qubit eigenbasis. There- the qubit and readout currents flow in the same direction,
fore the coupling constant λ directly enters Eq. (8.3). the critical current of the readout JJ is exceeded, which
Recently, this type of read out has been implemented for induces the junction switching to the resistive branch,
a charge qubit by capacitively coupling the SCB of the sending out a voltage pulse. This effect is used to distin-
qubit to a superconducting strip resonator151,152,153 . guish the qubit states. The method has been extensively
used experimentally by Vion et al.21,22,23 .
To describe the circuit, we add the Lagrangian of a
E. Threshold detection biased JJ, Eq. (5.11),
To illustrate the threshold-detection method, let us h̄2 φ̇2 m h̄

L= m + EJ cos φ + 2e Ie φ, (8.5)
consider an SCT qubit with a third Josephson junction 4EC
26
to the SCT Lagrangian (generalized Eq. (5.30), cf. Eqs.

(6.7), (7.7)),
U
2
h̄2 h̄2 2

2eCg
LSCT = φ̇− − Vg + φ̇
4EC h̄CΣ 4EC +
1
−2EJ cos φ+ cos φ− − EL φ̃2 (8.6)
2
(here we have neglected a small contribution of the gate
capacitance to the qubit charging energy). The phase
quantization condition will now read: 2φ+ + φ = φe + φ̃.
The measurement junction will be assumed in the phase
regime, EJm ≫ EC m
, and moreover, the inductive energy θ
will be the largest energy in the circuit, EL ≫ EJm . The
latter implies that the induced phase is negligibly small FIG. 26: Josephson potential energy of the measurement
and can be dropped from the phase quantization condi- junction during the measurement: for the ”0” qubit eigen-
tion. We also assume that φe = 0, thus 2φ+ + φ = 0. state there is a well (full line) confining a level, while for the
Then, after having omitted the variable φ+ , the kinetic ”1” qubit state there is no well (dashed line).
energy term of the qubit can be combined with the much
larger kinetic energy of the measurement junction lead-
ing to insignificant renormalization of the measurement while for the excited state it does not. This implies that
junction capacitance, C m + C/4 → C m . As a result, the when the junction is in the ground state, no voltage will
total Hamiltonian of the circuit will take the form, be generated. However, if the junction is in the excited
state, it will switch to the resistive branch, generating a
voltage pulse that can be detected.

2 φ
Ĥ = EC (n̂− − ng ) − 2EJ cos cos φ− With the discussed setup the direction of the persis-
2
tent current is measured. It is also possible to arrange
m 2 h̄
+EC n̂ − EJm cos φ − Ie φ. (8.7) the measurement of the flux by using a dc SQUID as a
2e threshold detector. Such a setup is suitable for the mea-
Since the measurement junction is supposed to be almost surement of flux qubits. Let us consider, for example, the
classical, its phase is fairly close to the minimum of the three junction flux qubit from Section VII C inductively
junction potential. During qubit operation, the bias cur- coupled to a dc SQUID. Then, under certain assump-
rent is zero; hence the phase of the measurement junction tions, the Hamiltonian of the system can be reduced to
is zero. When the measurement is made, the current is the following form:
ramped to a large value close to the critical current of 1
the measurement junction, Ie = (2e/h̄)EJm − δI, tilting Ĥ = − (ǫσz + ∆σx )
2
the junction potential and shifting the minimum towards h̄
s
π/2. Introducing a new variable φ = π + θ, we expand +EC n̂2 − (EJs + λσz ) cos φ − δI φ, (8.10)
the potential with respect to small θ ≪ 1 and, truncating 2e
the qubit part, we obtain where EJs is an effective (bias flux dependent) Josephson
energy of the SQUID, Eq. (5.24), and λ is an effective
ǫ ∆ θ coupling constant proportional to the mutual inductance
Ĥ = − σz − 1− σx
2 2 2 of the qubit and the SQUID loops.
m 2 θ3 h̄
+EC n̂ − EJm + δI θ, (8.8)
6 2e IX. PHYSICAL COUPLING SCHEMES FOR
√ TWO QUBITS
where ∆ = 2 E J . The ramping is supposed to be adi-
abatic so that the phase remains at the minimum point.
Let us analyze the behavior of the potential minimum A. General principles
by omitting a small kinetic term and diagonalizing the
Hamiltonian (8.8). The corresponding eigenenergies de- A generic scheme for coupling qubits is based on
pend on θ, the physical interaction of linear and non-linear os-
3
cillators constituting a superconducting circuit. The
∆2

E mθ h̄ Hamiltonians for the SCB, rf-SQUID, and plain JJ con-
E± (θ) = ∓ − EJ + δI ± θ, (8.9)
2 6 2e 4E tain quadratic terms representing the kinetic and poten-
tial energies plus the non-linear Josephson energy term,
as shown in Fig. 26. Then within the interval of the bias which is quadratic when expanded to lowest order,
currents, |δI| ≤ −(2e/h̄)(∆2 /4E), the potential energy
corresponding to the ground state has a local minimum, Ĥ = EC (n̂ − ng )2 + EJ (1 − cos φ) (9.1)
27
SCB SCB
C3
Vg Vg
FIG. 27: Fixed inductive (flux) coupling of elementary flux
qubit. The loops can be separate, or have a common leg like
in the figure.
FIG. 28: Fixed capacitive coupling of charge qubits
2
(φ − φe )
Ĥ = EC n̂2 + EJ (1 − cos φ) + EL (9.2)
2 for each qubit. The last matrix element is exponentially
small, while the first two ones are approximately equal to
h̄ the minimum points of the potential energy, φl and φr ,
Ĥ = EC n̂2 + EJ (1 − cos φ) + Ie φ. (9.3)
2e respectively. This implies that the truncated interaction
In a multi-qubit system the induced gate charge in the basically has the zz-form,
SCB, or the flux through the SQUID loop, or the phase Ĥint = λσz1 σz2 ,
in the Josephson energy, will be a sum of contributions 2
from several (in principle, all) qubits. The energy of the 1 h̄
λ= (L−1 )12 (φl − φr )1 (φl − φr )2 . (9.7)
system can therefore not be described as the sum of two 8 2e
independent qubits because of the quadratic dependence,
and the cross terms represent interaction energies of dif-
ferent kinds: capacitive, inductive and phase/current. C. Capacitive coupling of charge qubits
Moreover, using JJ circuits as non-linear coupling ele-
ments we have the advantage that the direct physical One of the simplest coupling schemes is the capacitive
coupling strength may be controlled, e.g tuning the in- coupling of charge qubits. Such a coupling is realized by
ductance via current biased JJs, or tuning the capaci- connecting the islands of two SCBs via a small capacitor,
tance by a voltage biased SCB. as illustrated in Fig. 28. This will introduce an addi-
tional term in the Lagrangian of the two non-interacting
SCBs, Eq. (5.27), namely the charging energy of the
B. Inductive coupling of flux qubits capacitor C3 ,
C3 V32
A common way of coupling flux qubits is the inductive δL = . (9.8)
coupling: magnetic flux induced by one qubit threads 2
the loop of another qubit, changing the effective external The voltage drop V3 over the capacitor is expressed via
flux. This effect is taken into account by introducing the the phase differences across the qubit junctions,
inductance matrix Lik , which connects flux in the i-th
h̄
loop with the current circulating in the k-th loop, V3 = (φ̇1 − φ̇2 ), (9.9)
X 2e
Φi = Lik Ik . (9.4) and thus the kinetic part of the Lagrangian (5.28) will
k take the form
The off-diagonal element of this matrix, L12 , is the mu- 2 X
1 h̄
tual inductance which is responsible for the interaction. K(φ̇1 , φ̇2 ) = Cik φ̇i φ̇k
By using the inductance matrix, the magnetic part of the 2 2e
i,k
potential energy in Eq. (6.16) can be generalized to the 2
case of two coupled qubits, h̄ X
− Cgi Vgi φ̇i , (9.10)
2 X 2e i
1 h̄
(L−1 )ik (φi − φei )(φk − φek ). (9.5) where the capacitance matrix elements are Cii = CΣi +
2 2e
ik C3 , and C12 = C3 . Then proceeding to the circuit quan-
Then following the truncation procedure explained in tum Hamiltonian as described in Section VI, we find the
Section VII C, we calculate the matrix elements, interaction term,
hl|φ̃ − f |li, hr|φ̃ − f |ri, hl|φ̃ − f |ri, (9.6) Ĥint = 2e2 (C −1 )12 n̂1 n̂2 . (9.11)
28
C3
SCB SCB
JJ1 JJ2
JJ
Vg Vg
FIG. 30: Capacitive coupling of single JJ qubits
FIG. 29: Fixed phase coupling of charge qubits
This interaction term is diagonal in the charge basis, and

therefore leads to the zz-interaction after truncation, SCB SCB
e2 −1
Ĥint = λσz1 σz2 , λ = (C )12 . (9.12)
2 L C
The qubit Hamiltonians are given by Eq. (7.5) with
charging energies renormalized by the coupling capaci- Vg Vg
tor.
FIG. 31: Two charge qubits coupled to a common LC-

D. JJ phase coupling of charge qubits oscillator.
Instead of the capacitor, the charge qubits can be con-

nected via a Josephson junction154 , as illustrated in Fig. turns to σy , and the qubit-qubit interaction takes the
29, yy-form,
In this case, the Josephson energy of the coupling junc- s
tion EJ3 cos(φ1 − φ2 ) must be added to the Lagrangian h̄2 ωp1 ωp2 −1
in addition to the charging energy. This interaction term Ĥint = λσy1 σy2 , λ = 2e2 (C )12 . (9.15)
EC1 EC2
is apparently off-diagonal in the charge basis and, after
truncation, gives rise to xx- and yy-couplings,
EJ3 F. Coupling via oscillators
Ĥint = λ(σx1 σx2 + σy1 σy2 ), λ= , (9.13)
4
or equivalently, Besides the direct coupling schemes described above,
several schemes of coupling qubits via auxiliary oscilla-
Ĥint = 2λ(σ+,1 σ−,2 + σ−,1 σ+,2 ). (9.14) tors have been considered42 . Such schemes provide more
flexibility, e.g. to control qubit interaction, to couple two
remote qubits, and to connect several qubits. Moreover,
E. Capacitive coupling of single JJs in many advanced qubits, the qubit variables are generi-
cally connected to the outside world via an oscillator (e.g.
Capacitive coupling of JJ qubits, illustrated in Fig. 30 the Delft and Saclay qubits). To explain the principles
is described in a way similar to the charge qubit, in terms of such a coupling, we consider the coupling scheme for
of the Lagrangian Eqs. (9.8), (9.9), and the resulting charge qubits suggested by Shnirman et al.14 .
interaction Hamiltonian has the form given in Eq. (9.11).
Generally, in the qubit eigenbasis, |0i and |1i, all ma-

trix elements of the interaction Hamiltonian are non-zero. 1. Coupling of charge (SCB, SCT) qubits
However, if we adopt a parabolic approximation for the
Josephson potential, then the diagonal matrix elements In this circuit the island of each SCB is connected to
turn to zero, n00 = n11 = 0, while the off-diagonal matrix ground via a common LC-oscillator, as illustrated in Fig.
elements remain finite, n01 = −n10 = −i(EJ /EC )1/4 . 31. The kinetic energy (5.27) of a single qubit should
Then, after truncation, the charge number operator n̂ now be modified taking into account the additional phase
29
difference φ across the oscillator,

2 h JJ
1 h̄ i
K(φ̇−,i ; φ̇) = 2C φ̇2−,i + Cg (Vgi − φ̇ − φ̇−,i )2 .
2 2e SCT SCT
(9.16)
The cross term in this equation can be made to vanish
by a change of qubit variable,
Cg
φ−,i = φi − aφ, a= . (9.17)
CΣ Vg Vg
The kinetic energy will then split into two independent
parts, the kinetic energy of the qubit in Eq. (5.28), and
an additional quadratic term, FIG. 32: Charge (charge-phase) qubits coupled via a com-
mon Josephson junction providing phase coupling of the two
2
1 h̄ CCg 2 circuits
φ̇ , (9.18)
2 2e CΣ
which should be combined with the kinetic energy of the the displacement does not change the oscillator ground
oscillator, leading to renormalization of oscillator capac- state energy, which then drops out after the averaging,
we finally arrive at the Hamiltonian of the direct effective
itance.
Expanding the Josephson energy, after the change of qubit coupling,
variable, gives λ1 λ2
Ĥint = − σy1 σy2 . (9.23)
EJi cos(φi − aφ) ≈ EJi cos φi − EJi aφ sin φi . (9.19) EL
provided the amplitude of the oscillations of φ is small. for the oscillator-coupled charge qubits in Fig. 31.
The last term in this equation describes the linear cou-
pling of the qubit to the LC-oscillator.
Collecting all the terms in the Lagrangian and perform- 2. Current coupling of SCT qubits
ing quantization and truncation procedures, we arrive at
the following Hamiltonian of the qubits coupled to the Charge qubits based on SCTs can be coupled by con-
oscillator (this is similar to Eq. (8.4) for the SCT), necting loops of neighboring qubits by a large Josephson
X junction in the common link155,156,157,158,159,160,161 , as il-
Ĥ = (ĤSCB,i + λi σyi φ) + Ĥosc , (9.20) lustrated in Fig. 32,
i=1,2 The idea is similar to the previous one: to couple qubit
variables to a new variable, the phase of the coupling
(i)
where ĤSCB is given by Eq. (7.5), and Josephson junction, then to arrange the phase regime
for the junction with large plasma frequency (ECcoupl ≪
EJi Cg EJcoupl ), and then to average out the additional phase.
λi = , (9.21)
CΣ Technically, the circuit is described using the SCT Hamil-
tonian, Eqs. (7.7), (7.8), for each qubit,
is the coupling strength, and
Ĥosc = ECosc n̂2 + EL φ2 /2, (9.22) ĤSCT = EC (n̂− − ng )2 + EC n̂2+

(2φ+ − φe )2
is the oscillator Hamiltonian where the term in Eq. (9.18) −2EJ cos φ+ cos φ− + EL , (9.24)
2
has been included.
The physics of the qubit coupling in this scheme is and adding the Hamiltonian of the coupling junction,
the following: quantum fluctuation of the charge of one
qubit produces a displacement of the oscillator, which Ĥc = EC,c n̂2c − EJ,c cos φc . (9.25)
perturbs the other qubit. If the plasma frequency of the
LC oscillator is much larger than the frequencies of all The phase φc across the coupling junction must be added
qubits, then virtual excitation of the oscillator will pro- to the flux quantization condition in each qubit loop;
duce a direct effective qubit-qubit coupling, the oscillator e.g., for the first qubit 2φ+,1 + φc = φe,1 + φ̃1 (for the
staying in the ground state during all qubit operations. second qubit the sign of φc will be minus). Assuming
To provide a small amplitude of the zero-point fluctu- small inductive energy, EL ≪ EJ,c , we may neglect φ̃;
ations, the oscillator plasma frequency should be small then assuming the flux regime for the coupling Joseph-
compared to the inductive energy, or ECosc ≪ EL . Then son junction we adopt a parabolic approximation for the
the fast fluctuations can be averaged out. Noticing that junction potential, EJ,c φ2c /2.
30
With these approximations, the Hamiltonian of the

first qubit plus coupling junction will a take form sim-
ilar to Eq. (9.24) where EJ,c will substitute for EL , and
φc will substitute for2φ+ − φe . Finally assuming the am-
plitude of the φc -oscillations to be small, we proceed as
in the previous subsection, i.e. expand the cosine term
obtaining linear coupling between the SCB and the oscil-
lator, truncate the full Hamiltonian, and average out the
oscillator. This will yield the following interaction term,
λ1 λ2 φi
Ĥint = σx1 σx2 , λi = EJ sin (9.26)
EJ,c 2
This coupling scheme also applies to flux qubits: in this FIG. 33: Flux transformer with variable coupling controlled
case, the coupling will have the same form as in Eq. (9.7), by a SQUID.
but the strength will be determined by the Josephson
energy of the coupling junction, cf. Eq. (9.26), rather
than by the mutual inductance.
on the controlling flux is given by the equation167 ,
−1
G. Variable coupling schemes Φ2 EJ πΦcx
= 1+ cos , (9.27)
Φ1 EL Φ0
Computing with quantum gate networks basically as-
sumes that one-and two-qubit gates can be turned on where EJ is the Josephson energy of the SQUID junction,
and off at will. This can be achieved by tuning qubits and EL is the inductive energy of the transformer.
with fixed, finite coupling in and out of resonance, in
NMR-style computing162 .
Here we shall discuss an alternative way, namely
to vary the strength of the physical coupling between 2. Variable Josephson coupling
nearest-neighbour qubits, as discussed in a number of re-
cent papers155,156,158,159,160,163,164,165,166 . A variable Josephson coupling is obtained when a sin-
gle Josephson junction is substituted by a symmetric dc
SQUID whose effective Josephson energy 2EJ cos(φe /2)
1. Variable inductive coupling depends on the magnetic flux threading the SQUID loop
(see the discussion in Section V C). This property is
To achieve variable inductive coupling of flux qubits commonly used to control level spacing in both flux and
one has to be able to the control the mutual inductance charge qubits introduced in Section V D, and it can also
of the qubit loops. This can be done by different kinds be used to switch on and off qubit-qubit couplings. For
of controllable switches (SQUIDS, transistors)163 in the example, the coupling of the charge-phase qubits via
circuit. In a recent experiment, a variable flux trans- Josephson junction in Fig. 32 can be made variable
former was implemented as a coupling element (see Fig. by substituting the single coupling junction with a dc
33) by controlling the transforming ratio167 . The flux SQUID155,156 .
transformer is a superconducting loop strongly induc- The coupling scheme discussed in Section IX F 1 is
tively coupled to the qubit loops, which are distant from made controllable by using a dc SQUID design for the
each other so that the direct mutual qubit inductance is SCB as explained in Section V D). Indeed, since the cou-
negligibly small. Because of the effect of quantization of pling strength depends on the Josephson energy of the
magnetic flux in the transformer loop112 , the local vari- qubit junction, Eq. (9.21), this solution provides vari-
ation of magnetic flux Φ1 induced by one qubit will af- able coupling of the qubits. Similarly, the coupling of
fect a local magnetic flux Φ2 in the vicinity of the other the SCTs considered in Section IX F 2 can be made con-
qubit creating effective qubit-qubit coupling. When a dc trollable by employing a dc SQUID as a coupling ele-
SQUID is inserted in the transformer loop, as shown in ment. A disadvantage of this solution is that the qubit
Fig. 33, it will shortcircuit the transformer loop, and the parameters will vary simultaneously with varying of the
transformer ratio Φ2 /Φ1 will change. The effect depends coupling strength. A more general drawback of the dc
on the current flowing through the SQUID, and is propor- SQUID-based controllable coupling is the necessity to
tional to the critical current of the SQUID. The latter is apply magnetic field locally, which might be difficult to
controlled by applying a magnetic flux Φcx to the SQUID achieve without disturbing other elements of the circuit.
loop, as explained in Section V C and shown in Fig. 33. This is however an experimental question, and what are
Quantitatively, the dependence of the transformer ratio practical solutions in the long run remains to be seen.
31
Ib
SCT SCT
Vg Vg
FIG. 35: Variable capacitance tuned by a voltage-controlled
SCB.
FIG. 34: Coupled charge qubits with current-controlled phase

coupling: the arrow indicates the direction of the controlling n̂2 , and it also depends on the gate voltages of the qubits
bias current. and the coupling junction. In contrast to the previous
scheme, here the coupling junction is not supposed to be
in the phase regime; however, it is still supposed to be
3. Variable phase coupling
fast, EJ ≫ EJi . Then the energy gap in the spectrum
of the coupling junction is much bigger than the qubit
An alternative solution for varying the coupling energy, and the junction will stay in the ground state
is based on the idea of controlling the properties during qubit operations. Then after truncation, and av-
of the Josephson junction by applying external dc eraging out the coupling junction, the Hamiltonian of the
current158,159,160 , as illustrated in Fig. 34. circuit will take the form,
Let us consider the coupling scheme of Section IX F 2: X
the coupling strength here depends on the plasma fre- Ĥ = ĤSCB,i + ǫ0 (σz1 + σz2 ) , (9.30)
quency of the coupling Josephson junction, which in turn i
depends on the form of the local minimum of the junction
potential energy. This form can be changed by tilting the where the qubit Hamiltonian is given by Eq. (7.5), and
junction potential by applying external bias current (Fig. the function ǫ0 is the ground state energy of the coupling
34), as discussed in Section V A. The role of the exter- junction. The latter can be generally presented as a linear
nal phase bias, φe , will now be played by the minimum combination of terms proportional to σz1 σz2 and σz1 +
point φ0 of the tilted potential determined by the applied σz2 ,
bias current, EJ,c sin φ0 = (h̄/2e)Ie . Then the interaction
term will read, ǫ0 (σz1 + σz2 ) = α + νσz1 σz2 + β (σz1 + σz2 ) . (9.31)
EJ2 sin2 (φ0 /2) with coefficients depending on the gate potentials. The
Ĥint = λσx1 σx2 , λ = , (9.28) second term in this expression gives the zz-coupling (in
EJ,c cos φ0
the charge basis), and the coupling constant ν may, ac-
and local magnetic field biasing is not required. cording to the analysis of Ref.165 , take on both positive
and negative values depending on the coupling junction
gate voltage. In particular it may turn to zero, implying
4. Variable capacitive coupling qubit decoupling.
Variable capacitive coupling of charge qubits based on

H. Two qubits coupled via a resonator
a quite different physical mechanism of interacting SCB
charges has been proposed in Ref.165 . The SCBs are then
connected via the circuit presented in Fig. 35. In the previous discussion, the coupling oscillator plays
The Hamiltonian of this circuit, including the charge a passive role, being enslaved by the qubit dynamics.
qubits, has the form However, if the oscillator is tuned into resonance with a
qubit, then the oscillator dynamics will become essential,
leading to qubit-oscillator entanglement. In this case,
X
Ĥ = ĤSCB,i +EC (n̂−q(n̂1 +n̂2 ))2 −EJ cos φ, (9.29)
i
the approximation of direct qubit-qubit coupling is not
appropriate; instead, manipulations explicitly involving
where EC and EJ ∼ Ec are the charging and Josephson the oscillator must be considered.
energies of the coupling junction, and n̂ and φ are the Let us consider, as an example, operations with two
charge and the phase of the coupling junction. The func- charge qubits capacitively coupled to the oscillator. As-
tion q is a linear function of the qubit charges, n̂1 , and suming the qubits to be biased at the degeneracy point
32
and proceeding to the qubit eigenbasis (phase basis in The manipulation should not necessarily be step-like, it
this case), we write the Hamiltonian on the form (cf. Eq. is sufficient to pass the resonance rapidly enough to pro-
(7.10), vide the Landau-Zener transition, i.e. the speed of the
frequency ramping should be comparable to the qubit
X ∆i
Ĥ = − σzi − λi σx φi + Ĥosc [φ]. (9.32) level splittings.
i=1,2
2 References to recent work on the entanglement of
qubits and oscillators will be given in Section IV C.
Let us consider the following manipulation involving the
variation of the oscillator frequency (cf. Ref164 ): at time
t = 0, the oscillator frequency is off-resonance with both X. DYNAMICS OF MULTI-QUBIT SYSTEMS
qubits,
A. General N-qubit formulation
h̄ω(0) < ∆1 < ∆2 . (9.33)
Then the frequency is rapidly ramped so that the oscil- A general N-qubit Hamiltonian with general qubit-
lator becomes resonant with the first qubit, qubit coupling can be written on the form
h̄ω(t1 ) = ∆1 , (9.34) X ǫi ∆i 1X
Ĥ = − ( σzi + σxi ) + λν,ij σνi σνj
2 2 2 i,j;ν
the frequency remaining constant for a while. Then the i
frequency is ramped again and brought into resonance (10.1)
with the second qubit,
To solve the Schrödinger equation
h̄ω(t2 ) = ∆2 . (9.35)
Ĥ|ψi = E|ψi (10.2)
Finally, after a certain time it is ramped further so that
the oscillator gets out of resonance with both qubits at we expand the N-qubit state in a complete basis, e.g. the
the end, 2N basis states of the (σz )N operator,
h̄ω(t > t3 ) > ∆2 . (9.36)
X
|ψi = aq |qi
When passing through the resonance, the oscillator is = a0 |0..00i + a1 |0..01i + a2 |0..10i + ...a(2N −1) |1..11i
hybridized with the corresponding qubit, and after pass- (10.3)
ing the resonance, the oscillator and qubit have become
entangled. For example, let us prepare our system at and project onto the basis states
t = 0 in the excited state ψ(0) = |100i = |1i|0i|0i, X
where the first number denotes the state of the oscilla- Ĥ |pihp|ψi = E|ψi (10.4)
tor (first excited level), and the last numbers denote the p
(ground) states of the first and second qubits, respec-
tively. After the first operation, the oscillator will be obtaining the ususal matrix equation
entangled with the first qubit, X
hq|Ĥ|piap = Eaq (10.5)
ψ(t1 < t < t2 ) = cos θ1 |10i + sin θ1 eiα |01i |0i.

p
(9.37)
where aq = hq|ψi, with typical matrix elements given by
After the second manipulation, the state |100i will be
entangled with state |001i, Hqp = hq|Ĥ|pi = h1..01|Ĥ|0..11i (10.6)
ψ(t > t3 ) = cos θ1 cos θ2 |100i + sin θ2 eiβ |001i

B. Two qubits, longitudinal (diagonal) coupling
+ sin θ1 eiα |010i. (9.38)
To ensure that there are no more resonances during The first case is an Ising-type model Hamiltonian, rel-
the described manipulations, it is sufficient to require evant for capacitively or inductively coupled flux qubits,
h̄ω(0) > ∆2 − ∆1 . X ǫi
If the controlling pulses are chosen so that θ2 = π/2, ∆i
H =− ( σzi + σxi ) + λ12 σz1 σz2 (10.7)
then the initial excited state will be eliminated form the i=1,2
2 2
final superposition, and we’ll get entangled states of the
qubits, while the oscillator will return to the ground We expand a general 2-qubit state in the the σz basis
state, q = {kl},
ψ(t > t3 ) = |0i cos θ1 eiβ |01i) + sin θ1 eiα |10i .

(9.39) |ψi = a1 |00i + a2 |01i + a3 |10i + a4 |11i (10.8)
33
With q = {kl} and p = {mn}, we get dealing with pure charge states. The secular equation
factorises according to
X ǫi ∆i
Hqp = −hkl| σzi + σxi ) + λ12 σz1 σz2 |mni det (Ĥ − E) =
2 2 2 2 2 2
i=1,2 = [(λ − E ) + ǫ(λ + E)][(λ − E ) − ǫ(λ + E)] = 0
ǫ1 ∆1 (10.13)
= −( hk|σz1 |mi + hk|σx1 |mi)hl|ni
2 2
ǫ2 ∆2 giving the eigenvalues
−hk|mi( hl|σz2 |ni) + hl|σx2 |ni)
2 2
+ λ12 hk|σz1 |mihl|σz2 |ni E1 = ǫ + λ , E2,3 = −λ , E4 = −ǫ + λ (10.14)
(10.9) The corresponding eigenvectors and 2-qubit states are
given by
The longitudinal zz-coupling only connects basis states
with the same indices (diagonal terms), |kli ↔ |kli. Eval-
E1 = ǫ + λ :
uation of the matrix elements results in the Hamiltonian
matrix (setting λ12 = λ, ǫ1 + ǫ2 = 2ǫ, ǫ1 − ǫ2 = 2∆ǫ) a2 = a3 = a4 = 0 (10.15)
ǫ + λ − 21 ∆2 − 21 ∆1
 
0
 − 1 ∆2 ∆ǫ − λ |ψ1 i = |00i (10.16)
2 0 − 12 ∆1 
Ĥ = 
 − 1 ∆1 (10.10)
−∆ǫ − λ − 12 ∆2 

2 0 E2,3 = −λ :
0 − 12 ∆1 − 21 ∆2 −ǫ + λ
a1 = a4 = 0 (10.17)
The one-body operators can only connect single-
particle states, and therefore the rest of the state must be
unchanged (unit overlap). Zero overlap matrix elements |ψ2 i = |01i , (a3 = 0) ; |ψ3 i = |10i , (a2 = 0) (10.18)
hk|mi = δk,m , hl|ni = δl,n (10.11)

therefore make some matrix elements zero. E4 = −ǫ + λ :
The two-body operators describing the qubit-qubit
a1 = a2 = a3 = 0 (10.19)
coupling connect two-particle states with up to two dif-
ferent indices (single-particle basis states). In the present
case, the qubit coupling Hamiltonian H2 = λ σz1 σz2 has |ψ4 i = |11i (10.20)
the charge basis as eigenstates and cannot couple differ-
ent charge states. It therefore only contributes to shifting
the energy eigenvalues on the diagonal by ±λ. In con- 2. Biasing at the degeneracy point
trast, qubit coupling Hamiltonians involving σx1 σx2 or
σy1 σy2 couplings contribute to the off-diagonal matrix Parking both qubits at the degeneracy point, ǫ = 0,
elements (in the charge basis), and specifically remove the secular equation factorises in a different way,
the zero matrix elements above.
In the examples below we will specifically consider the 1
det (H − E) = 0 = [(λ2 − E 2 ) + (∆1 + ∆2 )2 ]
case when ǫ1 − ǫ2 = 2∆ǫ = 0, which can be achieved 4
by tuning the charging energies via fabrication or gate 1
voltage bias. The eigenvalues of the matrix Schrödinger ×[(λ2 − E 2 ) + (∆1 − ∆2 )2 ]
4
equation with the Hamiltonian given by (10.10) are then (10.21)
determined by
1 again giving a set of exact energy eigenvalues
det (Ĥ − E) = 0 = [(λ2 − E 2 ) + (∆1 + ∆2 )2 ]
4
r
1
1 E1,4 = ± λ2 + (∆1 + ∆2 )2 (10.22)
× [(λ − E ) + (∆1 − ∆2 ) ] − ǫ2 (λ + E)2
2 2 2
4
4 r
(10.12) 1
E2,3 = ± λ2 + (∆1 − ∆2 )2 (10.23)
4
1. Biasing far away from the degeneracy point where E1 < E2 < E3 < E4 . For E = E1,4 , the corre-
sponding eigenvectors and 2-qubit states are given by
Far away from the degeneracy points in the limit ǫ ≫ ∆1 + ∆2
∆1 , ∆2 , the Hamiltonian matrix is diagonal and we are a1 = a4 , a2 = a3 ; , a2 = −a1 (10.24)
λ + 2E
34
|E1 i = a1 (|00i + |11i) + a2 (|01i + |10i) (10.25) Inserting the energy eigenstates from expressions
(10.25),(10.26),(10.29),(10.30) we obtain the time evolu-
|E4 i = a2 (|00i + |11i) − a1 (|01i + |10i) (10.26) tion in the charge basis,
After normalisation |ψ(t)i =

|00i a21 e−iE1 t + a22 eiE1 t + b21 e−iE2 t + b22 eiE2 t

s s
1 λ 1 λ
+ |01i a1 a2 (e−iE1 t + eiE1 t ) + b1 b2 (e−iE2 t + eiE2 t )

a1 = 1+ ; a2 = 1− (10.27)
2 |2E1 | 2 |2E1 |
+ |10i a1 a2 (e−iE1 t + eiE1 t ) − b1 b2 (e−iE2 t + eiE2 t )

For E = E2,3 , the corresponding eigenvectors and 2-
+ |11i a21 e−iE1 t + a22 eiE1 t − b21 e−iE2 t − b22 eiE2 t

qubit states are given by
(10.36)
∆1 − ∆2
b1 = −b4 , b2 = −b3 ; , b2 = −b1 (10.28) This state could be the input state for another gate oper-
λ + 2E
ation, where some other part of the Hamiltonian is sud-
|E2 i = b1 (|00i − |11i) + b2 (|01i − |10i) (10.29) denly varied. It might also be that this is the state to
be measured on. For that purpose one needs in principle
|E3 i = b2 (|00i − |11i) − b1 (|01i − |10i) (10.30) the probabilities
After normalisation p1 (t) = |h00|ψ(t)i|2 (10.37)
p2 (t) = |h01|ψ(t)i|2
s s
1 λ 1 λ (10.38)
b1 = 1+ ; b2 = 1− (10.31) p3 (t) = |h10|ψ(t)i|2 (10.39)
2 |2E2 | 2 |2E2 |
p4 (t) = |h11|ψ(t)i|2 (10.40)
3. Two-qubit dynamics under dc-pulse excitation As one example, we will calculate p3 (t) + p4 (t), which
represents the probability of finding the qubit 1 in the
We now investigate the dynamics of the two-qubit state upper state |1i, independently of the state of qubit 1
in the specific case that the dc-pulse is applied equally (the states of which are summed over).
to both gates, ǫ1 (t) = ǫ2 (t), where ǫ1 = ǫ1 (ng1 ) = p3 (t) = | (a21 + a22 ) cos E1 t − (b21 + b22 ) cos E2 t

EC (1 − 2ng1 ), ǫ2 = ǫ2 (ng2 ) = EC (1 − 2ng2 ), taking the
−i (a21 − a22 ) sin E1 t − (b21 − b22 ) sin E2 t |2 (10.41)

system from the the pure charge-state region to the co-
degeneracy point and back. This is the precise analogy p4 (t) = | [2ia1 a2 sin E1 t − 2ib1 b2 sin E2 t] |2 (10.42)
of the single-qubit dc-pulse scheme discussed in Section
IV C. Adding p3 (t) and p4 (t) we obtain
Since the charge state |00i of the starting point does
not have time to evolve during the steep rise of the dc- p3 (t) + p4 (t) =
pulse, it remains frozen and forms the initial state |00i 1 1 1
= − cos E1 t cos E2 t + χ sin E1 t sin E2 t
at time t = 0 at the co-degeneracy point, where it can be 2 4 4
expanded in the energy eigenbasis, 1 1
= − (1 + χ) cos E+ t + (1 − χ) cos E− t (10.43)
2 4
|00i = |ψ(0)i = c1 |E1 i + c2 |E2 i + c3 |E3 i + c4 |E4 i
where E+ = E2 + E1 , E− = E2 − E1 , and where χ =
(10.32) 2
(1 − 2|Eλ1 E2 | ).
To find the coefficients we project onto the charge basis,
kl=0,1
C. Two qubits, transverse x-x coupling
hkl|00i = c1 hkl|E1 i + c2 hkl|E2 i + c3 hkl|E3 i + c4 hkl|E4 i
(10.33) This model is relevant for charge qubits in current-
and use the explict results for the energy eigenstates to coupled loops. The Hamiltonian is now given by
calculate the matrix elements, obtaining
X ǫi ∆i
Ĥ = − ( σzi + σxi + λ σx1 σx2 (10.44)
|00i = a1 |E1 i + b1 |E2 i − b2 |E3 i − a2 |E4 i (10.34) i=1,2
2 2
For t > 0 this stationary state then develops in time Proceeding as before we have
governed by the constant Hamiltonian as
X ǫi ∆i
|ψ(t)i = a1 e−iE1 t |E1 i + b1 e−iE2 t |E2 i − Hqp = hkl| σzi − σxi ) + λ σz1 σz2 |mni
−b2 e+iE2 t |E3 i − a2 e+iE1 t |E4 i (10.35) i=1,2
2 2
35
ǫ1 ∆1
=( hk|σz(1) |mi − hk|σx1 |mi)hl|ni
2 2
ǫ2 ∆2
+hk|mi( hl|σz2 |ni) hl|σx2 |ni)
2 2
+ λ hk|σx1 |mihl|σx2 |ni
(10.45)
This coupling only connects basis states which differ in

both indices (”anti-diagonal” terms), i.e. |00i ↔ |11i and
|01i ↔ |10i, meaning that interaction will only appear FIG. 36: Control pulse sequences involved in quantum state
on the anti-diagonal. Evaluation of the matrix elements manipulations and measurement. Top: microwave voltage
pulses u(t) are applied to the control gate for state manipula-
result in the Hamiltonian matrix (again setting λ12 =
tion. Middle: a readout dc ac pulse (DCP) or ac pulse (ACP)
λ, ǫ1 + ǫ2 = 2ǫ, ǫ1 − ǫ2 = 2∆ǫ) Ib (t) is applied to the threshold detector/discriminator a time
td after the last microwave pulse. Bottom: output signal V(t)
− 21 ∆2 − 12 ∆1
 
ǫ λ from the detector. The occurence of a output pulse depends
 − 1 ∆2 ∆ǫ1 λ − 21 ∆1  on the occupation probabilities of the energy eigenstates. A
Ĥ =  2 , (10.46)
1
 − ∆1
2 λ −∆ǫ − 21 ∆2  discriminator with threshold Vth converts V(t) into a boolean
1 1 0/1 output for statistical analysis.
λ − 2 ∆1 − 2 ∆2 −ǫ
XI. EXPERIMENTS WITH SINGLE QUBITS In Fig. 36 the readout control pulse can be a dc pulse
AND READOUT DEVICES
(DCP) or ac pulse (ACP). A DCP readout most often
leads to an output voltage pulse, which may be quite
In this section we shall describe a few experiments destructive for the quantum system. An ACP readout
with single-qubits that represent the current state-of- presents a much weaker perturbation by probing the
the-art and quite likely will be central components in ac-response of an oscillator coupled to the qubit, creating
the developmement of multi-qubit systems during the much less back action, at best representing QND readout.
next five to ten years. The first experiment presents
Rabi oscillations induced and observed in the elemen-
tary phase qubit and readout oscillator formed by a
single JJ-junction30,31,32,33,34 . The next example de-
scribes a series of recent experiments with a flux qubit24 1. Spectroscopic detection of Rabi oscillation
coupled to different kinds of SQUID oscillator read-
out devices25,26,168 . A further example will discuss the
charge-phase qubit coupled to a JJ-junction oscillator21 In the simplest use of the classical oscillator, it does
and the recent demonstration of extensive NMR-style op- not discriminate between the two different qubit states,
eration of this qubit23 . The last example will present the but only between energies of radiation emitted by a lossy
case of a charge qubit (single Cooper pair box, SCB) resonator coupled to the qubit. In this way it is possible
coupled to a microwave stripline oscillator147,148,151,152 , to detect the ”low-frequency” Rabi oscillation of a qubit
representing a solid-state analogue of ”cavity QED”. driven by continuous (i.e. not pulsed) high-frequency
Before describing experiments and results, however, we radiation tuned in the vicinity of the qubit transition en-
will discuss in some detail the measurement procedures ergy. If the oscillator is tunable, the resonance window
that give information about resonance line profiles, Rabi can be swept past the Rabi line. Alternatively, the Rabi
oscillations, and relaxation and decohrence times. The frequency can be tuned and swept past the oscillator win-
illustrations will be chosen from Vion et al.21 and related dow by changing the qubit pumping power27 .
work for the case of the charge-phase qubit, but the ex-
amples are relevant for all types of qubits, representing
fundmental procedures for studying quantum systems.
2. Charge qubit energy level occupation from counting
electrons: rf-SET
A. Readout detectors
In this case, the charge qubit is interacting with a beam
Before discussing some of the actual experiments, it of electrons passing through a single-electron transistor
is convenient to describe some of basic readout-detector (SET) coupled to a charge qubit (e.g. the rf-SET,69 ), as
principles which more or less the same for the SET, rf- discussed in Section VIII and illustrated in Fig. 22. In
SET, JJ and SQUID devices. A typical pulse scheme for these cases the transmissivity of the electrons will show
exciting a qubit and reading out the response is shown two distinct values correlated with the two states of the
in Fig. 36: qubit.
36
Ic
2∆ eV
FIG. 38: Schematics of readout dc SQUID coupled to flux
FIG. 37: Current-voltage characteristic of tunnel junction
qubit; left - inductive coupling, right - direct phase coupling
(solid line) consists of the Josephson branch - vertical line at
V = 0, and the dissipative branch - curve at eV ≥ 2∆. When
the current is ramped, the junction stays at the Josephson
branch and when the current approaches the critical value Ic ,
the junction switches to the dissipative branch (dashed line). pacitance Csh and lead inductance L is used to ”tune”
ωp ). Thus, the plasma frequency takes different values
(0) (1)
ωp or ωp depending on the state of qubit, representing
3. Coupled qubit-classical-oscillator system: switching two different shapes of the SQUID oscillator potential.
detectors with dc-pulse (DCP) output In the dc-pulse-triggered switching SQUID7,24,25 , a
dc-current readout-pulse is applied after the operation
In Section VIII we analyzed the case of an SCT qubit pulse(s) (Fig. 36), setting a switching threshold for the
current-coupled to a JJ-oscillator (Fig. 25) and discussed critical current. The circulating qubit current for one
the Hamiltonian of the coupled qubit-JJ-oscillator sys- qubit state will then add to the critical current and make
tem. The effect of the qubit was to deform the oscillator the SQUID switch to the voltage state, while the other
potential in different ways depending on the state of the qubit state will reduce the current and leave the SQUID
qubit. The effect can then be probed in a number of in the zero-voltage state.
ways, by input and output dc and ac voltage and current In an application of ac-pulse-triggered switching
pulses, to determine the occupation of the qubit energy SQUID26 , readout relies on resonant activation by a mi-
levels. crowave pulse at a frequency close to ωp , adjusting the
Using non-linear oscillators like single JJs or SQUIDS power so that the SQUID switches to the finite voltage
one can achieve threshold and switching behaviour where state by resonant activation if the qubit is in state |0i,
the JJ/SQUID switches out of the zero-voltage state, re- whereas it stays in the zero-voltage state if it is in state
sulting in an output dc-voltage pulse. |1i. The resonant activation scheme is similar to the read-
Switching JJ: The method is based on the dependence out scheme used by Martinis et al.30,31,32,33 . (see Section
of the critical current of the JJ on the state of the qubit, XI C).
and consists of applying a short current DCP to the JJ
at a value Ib during a time ∆t, so that the JJ will switch
out of its zero-voltage state with a probability Psw (Ib ).
For well-chosen parameters, the detection efficiency can
approach unity. The switching probability then directly 4. Coupled qubit-classical-oscillator system: ac-pulse
measures the qubit’s energy level population. (ACP) non-switching detectors
Switching SQUID: In the experiments on flux qubits
by the Delft group, two kinds of physical coupling of
the SQUID to the qubit have been implemented, namely This implementation of ACP readout uses the qubit-
inductive coupling (Fig. 38 (left))7,168 and direct cou- SQUID combination7 shown in Fig. 38 (left), but with
pling (Fig. 38 (right)):24,25,26 The critical current of ACP instead of DCP readout, implementing a nonde-
the SQUID depends on the flux threading the loop, and structive dispersive method for the readout of the flux
therefore is different for different qubit states. The prob- qubit168 . The detection is based on the measurement
lem is to detect a two percent variation in the SQUID of the Josephson inductance of a dc-SQUID inductively
critical current associated with a transition between the coupled to the qubit. Using this method, Lupascu et
qubit states in a time shorter than the qubit energy relax- al.168 measured the spectrum of the qubit resonance line
ation time T1 . The SQUID behaves as an oscillator with a and obtained relaxation times around 80 µs, much longer
characteristic plasma frequency ωp = [(L + LJ )Csh ]−1/2 . than observed with DCP.
This frequency depends on the bias current Ib and on A related readout scheme was recently implemented by
the critical current
p IC via the Josephson inductance Siddiqi et al.169 using two different oscillation states of
LJ = Φ0 /2πIC 1 − Ib2 /Ic2 (the shunt capacitor with ca- the non-linear JJ in the zero-voltage state.
37
FIG. 39: Left: qubit energy level scheme. The vertical dashed
line marks the qubit working point and transition energy. The FIG. 40: Decay of the switching probability of the charge-
arrow marks the detuned microwave excitation. Right: pop- qubit readout junction as a function of the delay time td
ulation of the upper level as a function of the detuning; the between the excitation and readout pulses. Courtesy of D.
inverse of the half width (FWHM) of the resonance line gives Esteve, CEA-Saclay.
the total decoherence time T2 . Courtesy of D. Esteve, CEA-
Saclay.
.
B. Operation and measurement procedures
A number of operation and readout pulses can be ap-

plied to a qubit circuit in order to measure various prop-
erties. The number of applied microwave pulses can vary
depending on what quantities are to be measured: reso-
nance line profile, relaxation time, Rabi oscillation, Ram-
sey interference or Spin Echo, as discussed below.
1. Resonance line profiles and T2 decoherence times
To study the resonance line profile, one applies a sin- FIG. 41: Left: Rabi oscillations of the switching probability
gle long weak microwave pulse with given frequency, fol- measured just after a resonant microwave pulse of duration.
lowed by a readout pulse. The procedure is then repeated Right: Measured Rabi frequency (dots) varies linearly with
for a spectrum of frequencies. The Rabi oscillation am- microwave amplitude (voltage) as expected. Courtesy of D.
plitude, the upper state population, and the detector Esteve, CEA-Saclay.
switching probability p(t) will depend on the detuning
and will grow towards resonance. The linewidth gives
directly the total inverse decoherence lifetime 1/T2 =
3. Rabi oscillations and T2,Rabi decoherence time
1/2T1 + 1/Tφ . The decoherence-time contributions from
relaxation (1/T1 ) and dephasing (1/Tφ ) can be (approx-
imately) separately measured, as discussed below. To study Rabi oscillations (frequency Ω ∼ u, the am-
plitude of driving field) one turns on a resonant mi-
crowave pulse for a given time tµw and measures the up-
per |1i state population (probability) p1 (t) after a given
2. T1 relaxation times (short) delay time td . If the systems is perfectly coher-
ent, the state vector will develop as cos Ωt |0i+sin Ωt |1i,
To determine the T1 relaxation time one measures the and the population of the upper state will then oscil-
decacy of the population of the upper |1i state after a late as sin2 Ωt between 0 and 1. In the presence of de-
long microwave pulse saturating the transition, varying coherence, the amplitude of the oscillation of p1 (t) will
the delay time td of the detector readout pulse. The decay on a time scale TRabi towards the average value
measured T1 =1.8 microseconds is so far the best value p1 (t = ∞) = 0.5. This corresponds to incoherent satura-
for the Quantronium charge-phase qubit. tion of the 0 to 1 transition.
38
FIG. 42: Ramsey fringes of the switching probability af-

ter two phase-coherent microwave π/2 pulses separated by
the time delay t. The continuous line represents a fit by FIG. 43: Spin-echo experiment. The left part shows the
exponentially damped cosine function with time constant basic Ramsey oscillation. The right part shows the echo signal
T2∗ = Tφ = 0.5µs. The oscillation period coincides with the appearing in the time window around twice the time delay
inverse of the detuning frequency δ (here δ = ν − ν01 = 20.6 between the first π/2-pulse and the π-pulse. Courtesy of D.
MHz). Courtesy of D. Esteve, CEA-Saclay. Esteve, CEA-Saclay.
5. Spin-echo
4. Ramsey interference, dephasing and T2,Ramsey
decoherence time The spin-echo and Ramsey pulse sequences differ in
that a π-pulse around the x-axis is added in between the
two π/2-pulses in the spin-echo experiment, as shown in
The Ramsey interference experiment measures the de-
Fig.43. As in the Ramsey experiment, the first π/2-pulse
coherence time of the non-driven, freely precessing, qubit.
makes the Bloch vector start rotating in the equatorial
In this experiment a π/2 microwave pulse around the x-
x-y plane with frequency E/h̄ = ν01 . The effect of the
axis induces Rabi oscillation that tips the spin from the
π-pulse is now to flip the entire x-y plane with the rotat-
north pole down to the equator. The spin vector rotates
ing Bloch vector around the x-axis, reflecting the Bloch
in the x-y plane, and after a given time ∆t, another π/2
vector in the x-z plane. The Bloch vector then continues
microwave pulse is applied, immediately followed by a
to rotate in the x-y plane in the same direction. Finally
readout pulse.
a second π/2-pulse is applied to project the state on the
Since the π/2 pulses are detuned by δ from the qubit z-axis.
|0i → |1i transition frequency, the qubit will precess If two Bloch vectors with slightly different frequency
with frequency δ relative to the rotating frame of the start rotating at the same time in the x-y plane, they will
driving field. Since the second microwave pulse will be move with different angular speeds. The effect of the π-
applied in the plane of the rotating frame, it will have pulse at time ∆t will be to permute the Bloch vectors,
a projection cos δt on the qubit vector and will drive and then let the motion continue in the same direction.
the qubit towards the north or south poles, resulting This is similar to reversing the motion and letting the
in a specific time-independent final superposition state Bloch vectors back-trace. The net result is that the two
cos δt |0i + sin δt |1i of the qubit at the end of the last Bloch vectors re-align after time 2∆t.
π/2 pulse. The readout pulse then catches the qubit In NMR experiments, the different Bloch vectors cor-
in this superposition state and forces it to decay if the respond to different spins in the ensemble. In the case
qubit is in the upper |1i state. The probability will of a single qubit, the implication is that in a series of re-
oscillate with the detuning frequency, and a single-shot peated experiments, the result will be insensitive to small
experiment will then detect the upper state with this variations δE of the qubit energy between measurements,
probability. Repeating the experiment many times for as long as the energy (rotation frequency) is constant
different pi/2 pulse separation ∆t will then give |0i or during one and the same measurement. If fluctuations
|1i with probabilities cos2 δt and sin2 δt. Taking the occur during one measurement, then this cannot be cor-
average, and then varying the pulse separation, will rected for. The spin-echo procedure can therefore remove
trace out the Ramsey interference oscillatory signal. the measurement-related line-broadening associated with
Dephasing will make the signa decay on the timescale Tφ . slow fluctuations of the qubit precession, and allow ob-
servation of the intrinsic coherence time of the qubit.
39
C. NIST Current-biased Josephson Junction Qubit
Several experimental groups have realized the Joseph-

son Junction (JJ) qubit29,30,31,32,33,34 . Here we describe
the experiment performed at NIST32,33 . In this experi-
ment the junction parameters and bias current were cho-
sen such that a small number of well defined levels were
formed in the potential well (Fig. 21), with the inter-
level frequencies, ω01 /2π = 6.9GHz and ω12 /2π6.28GHz,
the quality factor was Q=380. The experiment was per-
formed at very low temperature, T= 25 mK.
The qubit was driven from the ground state, |0i, to

FIG. 44: Upper panel: Scanning electron micrograph of a
the upper state, |1i, by the resonance rf pulse with fre- small-loop flux-qubit with three Josephson junctions of crit-
quency ω01 , and then the occupation of the upper qubit ical current ∼ 0.5 mA, and an attached large-loop SQUID
level was measured. The measurement was performed by with two big Josephson junctions of critical current ∼ 2.2 mA.
exciting qubit further from the upper level to the auxil- Arrows indicate the two directions of the persistent current
iary level with higher escape rate by applying the second in the qubit. Lower panels: Schematic of the on-chip cir-
resonance pulse with frequency ω12 . During the whole cuit; crosses represent the Josephson junctions. The SQUID
operation, across the junction only oscillating voltage de- is shunted by two capacitors to reduce the SQUID plasma fre-
velops with zero average value over the period. When the quency and biased through a small resistor to avoid parasitic
tunneling event occurred, the junction switched to the resonances in the leads. Symmetry of the circuit is introduced
dissipative regime, and finite dc voltage appeared across to suppress excitation of the SQUID from the qubit-control
pulses. The MW line provides microwave current bursts in-
the junction, which was detected. Alternatively, post- ducing oscillating magnetic fields in the qubit loop. The cur-
measurement classical states ”0” and ”1” differ in flux rent line provides the measuring pulse Ib and the voltage line
by Φ0 , which is readily measured by a readout SQUID. allows the readout of the switching pulse V out. Adapted from
Chiorescu et al.24
The relaxation rate was measured in the standard way

by applying a Rabi pumping pulse followed by a mea- D. Flux qubits
suring pulse with a certain delay. Non-exponential relax-
ation was observed, first rapid, ∼ 20 nsec, and then more
1. Delft 3-junction persistent current qubit with dc-pulse
slow, ∼ 300 nsec. By reducing the length of the pumping
(DCP) readout
pulse down to 25 nsec, i.e. below the relaxation time,
Rabi oscillations were observed. In this experiment the
amplitude of the pumping pulse rather than duration was The original design of the 3-junction qubit (Fig. 1 was
varied, which affected the Rabi frequency and allowed the published by Mooij et al. in 19996 , and the first spec-
observation of oscillation of the level population for fixed troscopic measurements by van der Wal et al. in 20007
duration of the pumping pulse. (and simultaneously by Friedman et al.8 for a single-
junction rf-SQUID). Recently the Delft group has also
investigated designs where the 3-junction qubit is shar-
The Grenoble group34 has observed coherent oscil- ing a loop with the measurement SQUID to increase the
lations in a multi-level quantum system, formed by a coupling strength24 , as shown in Fig. 44.
current-biased dc SQUID. These oscillations have been To observe and study Rabi oscillations, the qubit was
induced by applying resonant microwave pulses of flux. biased at the degeneracy point and the qubit |0i → |1i
Quantum measurement is performed by a nanosecond transition excited by a pulse of 5.71 GHz microwave ra-
flux pulse that projects the final state onto one of two diation of variable length, followed by a bias-current (Ib )
different voltage states of the dc SQUID, which can be readout pulse applied to the SQUID (Fig. 44, lower left
read out. The number of quantum states involved in the panel). The first (high) part of the readout pulse (about
coherent oscillations increases with increasing microwave 10 ns) has two functions: It displaces the qubit away from
power. The dependence of the oscillation frequency on the degeneracy point so that the qubit eigenstates carry
microwave power deviates strongly from the linear regime finite current, and it tilts the SQUID potential so that
expected for a two-level system and can be very well ex- the SQUID can escape to the voltage state if the qubit is
plained by a theoretical model taking into account the in its upper state. The purpose of the long lower plateau
anharmonicity of the multi-level system. of the the readout pulse is to prevent the SQUID from
40
FIG. 45: AFM picture of the charge-phase qubit (”quantro-

nium”) corresponding to the circuit scheme in Fig. 25. The
working point is controlled by two external ”knobs”, a voltage
FIG. 46: Charge-phase qubit energy surface. (Ng = ng ;
gate controlling the induced charge (ng ) on the SCT island, δ/2π = φe .) Courtesy of D. Esteve, CEA-Saclay.
and a current gate controlling the total phase across the SCT
via the external flux (φe ) threading the loop. The large read-
out JJ is seen in the left part of the figure. Courtesy of D.
Esteve, CEA-Saclay. ∆(φe ) = 2EJ cos(φe /2). The qubit energy levels
1
q
E1,2 = ∓ ǫ(ng )2 + ∆(φe )2 (11.2)
2
returning (”retrapping”) to the zero-voltage state. With
these operation and readout techniques, Rabi (driven) then form a 2-dimensional landscape as functions of the
oscillations, Ramsey (free) oscillations and spin-echos of gate charge ng (V ) and phase φe (Φ), which are functions
the qubit were observed24, giving a Ramsey free oscil- of the gate voltage V = Cg 2eng and gate magnetic flux
lation dephasing time of 20 ns and spin echo dephasing Φ = (h̄/2e)φe . The energy level surfaces are therefore
time of 30 ns. functions of two parameters, gate voltage and flux, giv-
As mentioned above, relaxation times around 80 µs ing us two independent knobs for controlling the working
have been measured with ACP readout168 , demonstrat- point of the (charge-phase) qubit. Expanding the energy
ing that the properties of readout devices are criti- in Taylor series around some bias working point (Vb , Φb ),
cally important for observing intrinsic qubit decoherence one obtains
times. Recent further improvements have resulted in
Ramsey decoherence times T2,Ramsey of 200 ns, Rabi δE(V, Φ) = E(V, Φ) − E(Vb , Φb )
(driven) decoherence times T2,Rabi of 5 µs, and relax- δE δE 1 δ2E 2 1 δ2E 2
= δV + δΦ + δV + δΦ (11.3)
ation times T1 of more than 100 µs. δV δΦ 2 δV 2 2 δΦ2
The derivatives are response functions for charge, cur-
rent, capacitance and inductance (omitting the cross
E. Charge-phase qubit term) (i = 1, 2),
1. General considerations
δEi (V, Φ) = Qi δV + Ii δΦ + Ci δV 2 + Li δΦ2 (11.4)
or, equivalently,
As described in Section VII, the charge-phase qubit
circuit consists of a single-Cooper-pair transistor (SCT) δEi (ng , φe ) = Q̃i δng + I˜i δφe + C̃i δng 2 + L̃i δφe 2
in a superconducting loop, The Hamiltonian for the SCT (11.5)
part of this circuit is given by
On the energy level surfaces (Fig. 46), the special point
1 (ng , φe ) = (0.5, 0) is an extreme point with zero first
ĤSCT = − [ ǫ(ng ) σz + ∆(φe ) σx ] (11.1)
2 derivative. This means that the energies of the |0i and
|1i states will be invariant to first order to small varia-
where the charging and tunneling parameters are them- tions of charge and phase, which will minimize the qubit
selves functions of external control parameters, gate sensitivity to fluctuations of the working point caused by
charge ng and loop flux φe , ǫ(ng ) = EC (1 − 2ng ) and noise.
41
FIG. 48: Free-evolution decoherence times for the quantron-

FIG. 47: The charge-phase qubit frequency surface. (Ng = ium charge-phase SCT qubit.170 (Ng = ng ; δ/2π = φe .) Full
ng ; δ/2π = φe .) Courtesy of D. Esteve, CEA-Saclay. and dashed curves represent results of theoretical modeling.
Courtesy of D. Esteve, CEA-Saclay.
The point (ng , φe ) = (0.5, 0) is often referred to as

the ”degeneracy” point because the charging energy is
zero, ǫ(ng ) = EC (1 − 2ng ) = 0. The level splitting at
this point is determined by the Josephson tunneling in-
teraction EJ , and is a function of the external bias φe )
∆(φe ) = 2EJ cos(φe /2). The spin-echo results in Ref.22 gave a lifetime as long as
Figure 47 shows the frequency surface ν01 = ∆E/h, T2 = 1µs.
∆E = E2 − E1 . During operation, the qubit is preferably
parked at the degeneracy point (ng , φe ) = (0.5, 0) where
Q = I = 0, in order to minimize the decohering influence In a recent systematic experimental and theoretical in-
of noise. In order to induce a qubit response, for gate vestigation of a specific charge-phase device, investigat-
operation or readout, one must therefore either (i) move ing the effects of relaxation and dephasing on Rabi os-
the bias point away from point (0.5, 0) to have finite first- cillation, Ramsey fringes and spin-echos170 , one obtains
order response with Q 6= 0 or I 6= 0, or (ii) stay at (0.5, 0) the following picture of different coherence times for the
and apply a perturbing ac-field that makes the second- quantronium charge-phase qubit:
order response significant.
Fluctuations of charge δng and flux δφe will shift

energy levels and make the qubit transition energy
2. The CEA-Saclay ”quantronium” charge-phase qubit p
ǫ(ng + δng )2 + ∆(φe + δφe )2 fluctuate. However, the
charge degeneracy point is a saddle point, which means
The ”quantronium” charge-phase circuit is given by that at that working point the qubit transition frequency
Fig. 45 adding a large readout Josephson junction in is insensitive to low-frequency noise to first order, allow-
the loop (cf. Fig. 25). The minimum linewidth (Fig. 39) ing long coherence times. As can be seen in Fig. 48,
corresponds to a Q-value of 20000 and a decoherence time the coherence is sharply peaked ound the ”magic” de-
T2 = 0.5 µs. With the measured relaxation time T1 =1.8 generacy point. The spin-echo experiment indicates the
µs (Fig. 40), the dephasing time can be estimated to presence of slow charge fluctuations from perturbing im-
Tφ =0.8 µs. purity two-level systems (TLS) (1/f noise) and that long
A set of results for Rabi oscillations of the Saclay coherence time can be recovered by spin-echo techniques
quantronium qubit is shown in Fig. 41. The decoher- until the decoherence becomes too rapid at significant
ence time represents decoherence under driving condi- distances from the magic point along the charge axis. In
tions. Another, more fundamental, measure of decoher- contrast, in the experiments with this device the decoher-
ence is the free precession dephasing time T2 when the ence due to phase fluctuations could not be significantly
qubit is left to itself. This is measured in in the Ramsey compensated for by spin-echo techniques, indicating that
two-pulse experiment, as already described above in Fig. the phase noise (current and flux noise) in this device is
42 showing the CEA-Saclay data21,22 , giving T2 = 0.5 µs. high-frequency noise.
42
XII. EXPERIMENTS WITH QUBITS COUPLED

TO QUANTUM OSCILLATORS
A. General discussion
The present development of quantum information pro-

cessing with Josephson Junctions (JJ-QIP) goes in the
direction of coupling qubits with quantum oscillators, for
operation, readout and memory. In Section VIII we dis-
cussed the SCT, i.e. a single Cooper-pair transistor in
a superconducting loop71 , providing one typical form of
the Hamiltonian for a qubit-oscillator coupled system. FIG. 49: Qubit-oscillator level structure. The notation for
We also showed with perturbation theory how the Hamil- the states is: |qubit; oscillatori = |0/1; n = 0, 1, ..i; (a) E ≈
tonian gave rise to qubit-dependent deformed oscillator 2h̄ω: very large ”detuning”, weak coupling. (b) E ≈ h̄ω:
resonance, strong coupling and hybridization, level (”vacuum
potential and shifted oscillator frequency. In VIII, in
Rabi”) splitting.
addition we discussed the SCT charge-coupled to an LC-
oscillator, which is also representative for a flux qubit
coupled to a SQUID oscillator, and which describes a
charge qubit in a microwave cavity. Figure 49 shows the basic level structure of the qubit-
To connect to the language of quantum optics and cav- oscillator system in the cases of (a) weak and (b) strong
ity QED and the current work on solid-state applications, coupling.
we now explicitly introduce quantization of the oscillator. What is weak or strong coupling is determined by the
Quantizing the oscillator, φ̃ ∼ (a+ + a), a representative strength of the level hybridization, which in the end de-
form of the qubit-oscillator Hamiltonian reads: pends on qubit-oscillator detuning and level degeneracies.
The perturbative Hamiltonian in Eq. (12.7) is valid for
Ĥ = Ĥq + Ĥint + Ĥosc (12.1) large detuning (g ≪ δqr ) and allows us to approach the
1 case of strong coupling between the qubit and the oscil-
Ĥq = − E σz (12.2) lator. Close to resonance the degenerate states have to
2
be treated non-perturbatively.
Ĥint = g σx (a+ + a) (12.3)
Figure 49(a) corresponds to the weak-coupling (non-
1 resonant) case where the levels of the two subsystems are
Ĥosc = h̄ω (a+ a + ) (12.4)
2 only weakly perturbed by the coupling, adding red and
Introducing the step operators σ± = σx ± i σy , the inter- blue sideband transitions |01i → |10i and |00i → |11i to
action term can be written as the main zero-photon transition |00i → |10i.
Figure 49(b) corresponds to the resonant strong-
Ĥint = g (σ+ a + σ− a+ ) + g (σ+ a+ + σ− a) (12.5) coupling case when the |01 > and |10 > states are de-
generate, in which case the qubit-oscillator coupling pro-
The first term duces two ”bonding-antibonding” states in the usual way,
and the main line becomes split into two lines (”vacuum
Ĥint = g (σ+ a + σ− a+ ) (12.6) Rabi splitting”. Of major importance are the linewidths
of the qubit and the oscillator relative to the splittings
represents the resonant (co-rotating) part of the interac- caused by the interaction. To discriminate between the
tion, while the second term represents the non-resonant two qubit states, the oscillator shift must be larger than
counter-rotating part. In the rotating-wave approxima- the average level width.
tion (RWA) one only keeps the first term, which gives the
Since the qubit and the oscillator form a coherent
Jaynes-Cummings model171,172,173,174 . Diagonalizing the
multi-level system, as described before (Section X B 3),
Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian to second order by a uni-
the time evolution can be written as c1 (t)|00i+c2 (t)|01i+
tary transformation gives
c3 (t)|10i+c4 (t)|11i, which in general does not reduce to a
1 g2 g2 product of qubit and oscillator states, and therefore rep-
H = − (E + ) σz + (h̄ω + σz ) a+ a (12.7) resents (time-dependent) entanglement. This provides
2 δ δ opportunities for implementing quantum gate operation
where δ = E − h̄ω is the so called detuning. The re- involving qubits and oscillators.
sult illustrates what we have already discussed in detail, Generation and control of entangled states can be
namely that (i) the qubit transition energy E is shifted achieved by using microwave pulses to induce Rabi oscil-
(renormalized) by the coupling to the oscillator, and (ii) lation between specific transitions of the coupled qubit-
the oscillator energy h̄ω is shifted by the qubit in differ- oscillator system, and the result can be studied by spec-
ent directions depending on the state of the qubit, which troscopy on suitable transitions or by time-resolved de-
allows discriminating the two qubit states. tection of suitable Rabi oscillations.
43
FIG. 50: Resonant frequencies indicated by peaks in the

SQUID switching probability when a long (300 ns) microwave
pulse excites (saturates) the system before the readout pulse.
Data are represented as a function of the external flux Φext
through the qubit area away from the qubit symmetry point.
The blue |00i → |11i and red |01i → |10i sidebands are shown
by down- and up-triangles, respectively; continuous lines are
obtained by adding 2.96 GHz and -2.90 GHz, respectively,
to the central continuous line (numerical fit). These values
are close to the oscillator resonance frequency νp at 2.91 GHz
(solid circles). Courtesy of J.E. Mooij, TU Delft. FIG. 51: Generation and control of entangled states via π and
2π Rabi pulses on the qubit transition |00i → |10i, followed
by Rabi driving of blue sideband transitions |00i →. A π pulse
B. Delft persistent current flux qubit coupled to a excites the system from |00i to |10i, which suppresses the blue
quantum oscillator sideband transitions |00i → |11i (second curve from the top).
On the other hand, with a 2π pulse the system returns to |00i,
which allows Rabi oscillation on the blue sideband. Adapted
The Delft experiment25 demonstrates entanglement from Chiorescu et al.25
between a superconducting flux qubit and a SQUID
quantum oscillator. The SQUID provides the measure-
ment system for detecting the quantum states (threshold
switching detector, Fig. 44). It is also presents an effec- dynamics in microwave multi-pulse experiments: by co-
tive inductance that, in parallel with an external shunt herently (de)populating selected levels via proper timing
capacitance, acts as a low-frequency harmonic oscillator; of Rabi oscillations induced by a first pulse, a second
the qubit and oscillator frequencies are approximately pulse can induce Rabi oscillations on another transition
hνq = hν01 ≈ 6 GHz and hνr ≈ 3 GHz, corresponding connected to the levels controlled by the first pulse. Al-
to Fig. 49(a). ternatively, such Rabi oscillations can instead be blocked
In the Delft experiment25 , performing spectroscopy on by the first excitation.
the coupled qubit-oscillator multi-level system reveals the This is shown experimentally in Fig. ??: by preparing
variation of the main and sideband transitions with flux the initial state with initial π and 2π pulses, the side-
bias Φext , as shown in Fig. 50. The presence of visible band Rabi oscillations could be turned off and on again.
sideband transitions demonstrates the qubit-oscillator in- The corresponding Rabi oscillations are shown in the left
teraction and (weak) level hybridization). part of Fig. ??(b), demonstrating rapid decay due to the
Short microwave pulses can now be used to induce Rabi strong damping of the SQUID oscillator (lifetime ∼ 3 ns;
oscillations between the various qubit-oscillator transi- Q=100-150).
tions. In the Delft experiment25 , microwave pulses with In the previous example, the control pulse (first pulse)
frequency νq = ν01 ≈ ∆/h ≈ 5.9 GHz (qubit symme- was applied to the main |00i → |10i transition, control-
try point) were first used to induce Rabi oscillations ling the populations of the ”0” and ”1” levels. In the
with ∼ 25 ns decay time at the main qubit transition next example, microwave control pulse is applied to the
|00i → |10i (and |01i → |11i) for different values of |00i → |01i transition, inducing Rabi oscillations which
the microwave power. The Rabi frequency as function populate the first excited state of oscillator. A second
of the amplitude of the microwave voltage demonstrated microwave pulse (in principle, with different frequency)
qubit-oscillator hybridization (avoided crossings) at the can then induce Rabi oscillations on the |01i → |10i
oscillator νp (νr ) and Larmor ∆/h (!) frequencies. transition (red-sideband). The experimental result25 is
The dynamics of the coupled qubit-oscillator system shown Fig. 53, Clearly, for sufficiently long qubit and os-
can be studied by inducing microwave-driven Rabi oscil- cillator lifetimes, one can prepare entangled Bell states,
1 1
lation between the blue |00i → |11i and red |01i → |10i 2 (|00i ± |01i) and 2 (|01i ± |10i) by applying π/2 mi-
sidebands. In particular one can study the conditional crowave pulses to the |00i → |11i and |01i → |10i tran-
44
FIG. 54: Yale SCB charge-phase qubit coupled to an oscil-

lator in the form of a superconducting microwave stripline
resonator. Adapted from Wallraff et al.151
C. Yale charge-phase qubit coupled to a strip-line

resonator
In the Yale experiments151,152 a coherent qubit-

quantum oscillator system is realized in the form of a
Cooper pair box capacitively coupled to a superconduct-
FIG. 52: Generation and control of entangled states via π and ing stripline resonator (Fig. 54) forming one section of a
2π Rabi pulses on the qubit transition |00i → |10i, followed microwave transmission line. The stripline resonator, a
by Rabi driving of red sideband transitions |10i → |01i. A π finite length (24 mm) of planar wave guide, is a solid-state
pulse excites the system from |00i to |10i, which In the right analogue of the cavity electromagnetic resonator used in
panel, a π pulse excites the system from |00i to |10i, which
quantum optics to study strong atom-photon interaction
populates the |10i state and allows Rabi oscillation on the red
sideband transitions |01i → |10i. Adapted from Chiorescu et
and entanglement. In the Yale experiments, the qubit is
al.25 placed in the transverse field in the gap between the res-
onator strip lines, i.e. inside the microwave cavity. The
EC and EJ parameters are such that the SCT is effec-
tively in the charge-phase region, and it is operated by
controlling both the charge and phase (flux) ports.
The large effective electric dipole moment d of Cooper
pair box and the large vacuum electric field E0 in the
transmission line cavity lead to a large vacuum Rabi fre-
quency νRabi = 2dE0 /h, which allows reaching the strong
coupling limit of cavity QED in the circuit.
In the Yale experiment, spectroscopic measurements
are performed by driving the qubit with resonant mi-
crowave pulses and simultaneously detecting the fre-
quency and intensity-dependent amplitude and phase of
probe pulses of microwave radiation sent through a trans-
mission line coupled to the stripline resonator via in-
put/out capacitors (Fig. 54). The oscillator frequency
is fixed at hνr ≈ 6 GHz. The qubit level separation, on
the other hand, is tunable over a wide frequency range
FIG. 53: Generation and control of entangled states and around 6 GHz in two independent ways: (i) by vary-
study of decay and lifetimes. Here a Rabi π pulse on the os- ing the magnetic flux φe through the loop, forming the
cillator transition |00i → |01i populates the state |01i, which phase (flux) gate V D, or (ii) by varying the charge ng via
then allows Rabi oscillation on the red sideband transition the voltage gate, primarily around the charge degeneracy
|01i → |10i. The decay of both the Rabi oscillation and the point, ng =1/2, to minimize the effect of charge fluctua-
average probability gives evidence for short oscillator life time
tions.
(∼ 3 ns; Q=100-150). Adapted from Chiorescu et al.25
The flux bias is used to tune the qubit transition fre-
quency at ng =1/2 to values larger or smaller than the res-
onator frequency. The tuning the qubit frequency with
the charge gate will provide two distinct cases: the qubit
always detuned from the oscillator, and the qubit being
sitions. degenerate with the resonator at certain values of ng .
45
A central result151 is the evidence for the qubit-

oscillator hybridization and splitting of the degenerate
|01i and |10i states, ν01 → ν± , as illustrated in Fig.
49 (right). This splitting is often called ”vacuum Rabi”
splitting because the ocillator is in its ground (vacuum)
state.
The |01i, |10i level splitting is observed through mi-
crowave excitation of the 0 → 1 resonance transition
and observing the splitting of the resonance line as the
qubit and the oscillator are tuned into resonance (by tun-
ing the qubit frequency to zero qubit-oscillator detuning,
δ = νq − νr = 0).
Another central result152 is the evidence for a long
qubit dephasing time of T2 > 200 ns under optimal con-
ditions: qubit parked at the charge degeneracy point,
and weak driving field (low photon occupation number
in the resonator cavity). In the experiment151 the qubit-
oscillator detuning is large, the qubit resonance transi-
tion νq = ν01 is scanned by microwave radiation, and the
dispersive shift of the resonator frequency νr seen by a
microwave probe beam is used to determine the occupa- FIG. 55: The NEC 2-qubit system: two capacitively cou-
tion of the qubit levels. Scanning the qubit |00i → |10i pled charge qubits. The left qubit is a single Cooper pair
resonance line profile allowed to determine the lineshape box (SCB) and the right qubit is an SCT with flux-tunable
Josephson energy. Courtesy of J.S. Tsai, NEC, Tsukuba,
and linewith as a function of microwave power, giving the
Japan.
best value of T2 > 200 ns. Moreover, observation of the
postion of the resonance as a function of microwave power
allowed the determination of the ac-Stark shift, i.e. the XIII. EXPERIMENTAL MANIPULATION OF
Rabi frequency as a function of the photon occupation COUPLED TWO-QUBIT SYSTEMS
(electric field) of the cavity. The measurement induces
an ac-Stark shift of 0.6 MHz per photon in the qubit level A. Capacitively coupled charge qubits
separation. Fluctuations in the photon number (shot
noise) induce level fluctuations in the qubit leading to
An AFM picture of the NEC SCB 2-qubit system36 is
dephasing which is the characteristic back-action of the
shown in Fig. 55 and the corresponding circuit JJ circuit
measurement. A cross-over from Lorentzian to Gaus-
in Fig. 28 (note that in the NEC circuit the left SCT is
sian resonance line shape with increasing measurement
replaced by a simple SCB).
power is observed and explained by dependence of the
Two coupled qubits constitute a 4-level system. The
resonance linewidth on the cavity occupation number,
Hamiltonian for the NEC system of two capacitively cou-
exceeding the linewidth due to intrinsic decoherence at
pled charge qubits (SCBs) was analyzed in the Appendix.
high rf-power.
The four energy eigenvalues E1,2,3,4 (ng1 , ng2 ) are plot-
ted in Fig. 56 as a functions of the gate charges. At
each point in the parameter space, an arbitrary two-qubit
state can be written as a superposition of the four two-
qubit energy eigenstates.
D. Comparison of the Delft and Yale approaches As described in Sections IV and X, the general proce-
dure for operating with dc-pulses is to initialize the sys-
tem to its ground state |00i at the chosen starting point
In comparison, the Delft experiment25 corresponds to (ng10 , ng20 ) and then suddenly change the Hamiltonian
the case of very large detuning (νq = 6 GHz, νr = 3 GHz; at time t = 0 to the gate bias (ng1 , ng2 ). If the change is
δ = νq − νr ∼ νr ; Fig. 49 (left)), so that one will observe strictly sudden, then the state at (ng1 , ng2 ) at time t = 0
a main resonance line |00i → |10i and two sidebands, is |ψ(t = 0)i = |00i, which can be expanded in the energy
|00i → |11i (blue) and |01i → |10i (red). Decreasing the basis of the Hamiltonian,
detuning δ, the blue and red sidebands will move away
to higher resp. lower frequencies, and one will arrive at |ψ(0)i = |00i = c1 |E1 i + c2 |E2 i + c3 |E3 i + c4 |E4 i (13.1)
the case of zero detuning and qubit-oscillator degeneracy. This stationary state then develops in time governed by
If the qubit-oscillator coupling is larger than the average the constant Hamiltonian as
linewidth, one will then observe a splitting of the main
line (Fig. 49 (right)). |ψ(t)i = c1 e−iE1 t |E1 i + c2 e−iE2 t |E2 i +
46
FIG. 57: The NEC 2-qubit system: pulse sequences for a

CNOT gate (actually, the gate is a N OT − CN OT gate).
Courtesy of J.S. Tsai, NEC, Tsukuba, Japan.
tional gate operation due to the different time evolution

FIG. 56: The NEC 2-qubit system: Energy-level structure of the states departing from A or B.
as a function of the gate charges ng1 and ng2 , independently
controlled by the gate voltages Vg1 and Vg2 . Courtesy of J.S. Specifically, an entangling gate of controlled-NOT
Tsai, NEC, Tsukuba, Japan. (CNOT) type was demonstrated by Yamamoto et al.36
using the pulse sequences shown in Fig. 57: First one
applies a dc-pulse to gate 1 of the control qubit, mov-
+c3 e−iE3 t |E3 i + c4 e−iE4 t |E4 i (13.2) ing out (down left) left from |00i (point A in Fig. 56)
in the ng1 direction to the single-qubit degeneracy point
If one re-expands this state in the charge basis of the
(point E), staying for a certain time, and then moving
starting point A (Fig. 56), then one obtains a system
back (turning off the pulse), putting the system in a su-
with periodic coefficients ai (t),
perposition α|00i + β|10i (points A and B). Next one
|ψ(t)i = a1 (t)|00i + a2 (t)|01i + a3 (t)|10i + a4 (t)|11i applies a dc-pulse to gate 2 of the target qubit, moving
(13.3) out (right) in the ng2 direction and back. The pulse is
developing in time through all of the charge states. designed to reach the first degeneracy point (point G),
To perform a two-qubit conditional gate operation, one allowing the state to develop into a superposition of 00
performs a series of pulses moving the system around (point A) and 01 (point C) if the control state was 00. If
in parameter space. Specifically, the NEC scheme is to instead the control state was 10 (point B), the dc-pulse
apply sequential dc-pulses to the charge pulse gates of on gate 2 will not reach the two-qubit degeneracy point
each of the two qubits in Fig. 55. Two cases have been (point H) and the development will be roughly adiabatic,
studied so far: taking the state back to 10 (point B), never reaching 11
(1) Vg1 (t) = Vg2 (t): This is the case with common (point D).
control dc-pulses for studied by Pashkin et al.35 . Since With timing such (π/2-pulse) that 00 → 01 (A → G →
ǫ1 (t) = ǫ2 (t), the plane of operation is at 45 degrees to C), the control gate leads to 00+10, and the target gate
the axes in Fig. 56. As a result, Pashkin et al.35 observed only modifies the first component (00 → 01), resulting in
interference effects and beating oscillations between the 01+10, i.e. one of the Bell states. This is shown in the
two qubits, as described by Eq. (10.43). top panel of Fig. 57.
(2) Vg1 (t) = 0; Vg2 (t), Vg1 (t); Vg2 (t) = 0: This is the
case with separate sequential dc pulses on separate gates If instead one first applies a π/2-pulse in the ng2 di-
recently studied by Yamamoto et al.36 . The scheme is rection to the target qubit, inducing 00 → 01 (C), and
illustrated in Fig. 56: Starting at point A, first the sys- then applies a π/2-pulse in the ng1 direction to this state,
tem is pulsed in the ng1 direction, putting the system reaching 01+11, and then again applies a π/2-pulse to the
in a superposition of the states at points A and B; then target qubit 2, resulting 00+11, one obtains the other
the system is pulsed in the ng2 direction, allowing condi- Bell state. This is shown in the bottom panel of Fig. 57.
47
FIG. 59: Circuit scheme for two capacitively coupled current

(flux) biased JJ qubits with rf and dc control/readout lines.
FIG. 58: Scanning microscope image of two inductively cou- Adapted from McDermott et al.178
pled qubits surrounded by a DC-SQUID. Courtesy of J. Ma-
jer, TU Delft.
B. Inductively coupled flux qubits
Figure 58 shows a circuit with two inductively coupled

flux qubits forming a four-level quantum system, excited
by a single microwave line and surrounded by a single
measurement SQUID37,38 . With this circuit Majer et
al.37,38 have spectroscopically mapped large portions of FIG. 60: Potential energies and quantized energy levels the
Josephson phase qubit: left, during qubit operation; right,
the level structure and determined the device parameters
during state measurement, in which case the qubit well is
entering in the Hamiltonian matrix Eq. (10.10), finding much shallower and state |1i rapidly tunnels to the right hand
good agreement with the design parameters. Majer et al. well. Adapted from McDermott et al.178
found clear manifestations of qubit-qubit interaction and
hybridization in the level structure as a function of bias
flux. Presently, ter Haar et al.175 are investigating a more become hybridized and split by the interaction. A mi-
strongly coupled system with a JJ in the common leg (cf. crowave π-pulse tuned to the |0i → |1i transition of one of
Fig. 32), inducing Rabi oscillations and performing con- the isolated qubits will ”suddenly” induce a |00i → |10i
ditional spectroscopy along the lines described in Section transition, populating the |E+ i = |10i + |01i and |E− i =
XII in connection with the coupled qubit-oscillator sys- |10i − |01i states with equal weights. This will leave
tem. the system oscillating between the two qubits, between
A similar device with two flux qubits inside a cou- the |10i and |01i states, |ψ(t)i = |E+ i + e−iδEt |E− i =
pling/measurement SQUID has recently been investi- cos(δEt/2)|10i + sin(δEt/2)|01i where δE = E− − E+ .
gated by et al.176,177 , so far demonstrating Rabi oscilla- This means that the two-qubit system oscillates between
tion of individual qubits. Finally, Izmalkov et al.39 have non-entangled and entangled states. With one ideal de-
spectroscopically demonstrated effects of qubit-qubit in- tector for each qubit we can measure the state of each
teraction and hybridization for two inductively coupled qubit with any prescribed time delay between measure-
flux qubits inside a low-frequency tank circuit. ments. With simultaneous measurements we can deter-
mine all the probabilities pij = |hij|ψ(t)i|2 , ideally giv-
ing p10 = 21 (1 + cos(δEt)), p01 = 12 (1 − cos(δEt)), and
C. Two capacitively coupled JJ qubits p00 = p11 = 0 in the absence of relaxation, decoherence
and perturbations caused by the detectors.
Capacitive coupling of two JJ qubits (Section IX Figure 61 shows the actual experimental results of
E, Fig. 30) has recently been investigated by several Ref.178 for the probabilities pij (t): The p10 and p01 prob-
groups40,178 , showing indirect40 and direct178 evidence abilities oscillate out-of-phase, as expected. In addition,
for qubit entanglement. Figure 59 shows the circuit used the average probabilities and oscillation amplitudes all
by McDermott et al.178 , The potential-well and level decay with time. The results are compatible178 with the
structure of each JJ qubit under operation and measure- the finite rise time of the initial π-pulse (5 ns), the single-
ment conditions are shown in Fig. 60, qubit readout fidelity (70 percent) and the single-qubit
The 2-qubit circuit behaves as two dipole-coupled relaxation time T1 (25 ns), and the limited two-qubit
pseudo-2-level systems, illustrated in Fig.49. With ”iden- readout fidelity, as used in the numerical simulations. Of
tical” qubits, the |01i and |10i states are degenerate and particular interest is that for simultaneous (within 2 ns)
48
FIG. 62: EPR anticorrelation in the singlet state
A. Bell measurements
The first essential step is to study the quantum dy-

namics of a two-qubit circuit and to perform a test of
FIG. 61: Interaction of the coupled qubits in the time do- Bell’s inequalities by creating entangled two-qubit Bell
main. The qubits are tuned into resonance and the system states (Section III, Ref.49 ) and performing simultaneous
is suddenly prepared in state (10) by a microwave π-pulse
projective measurements on the two qubits, similarly to
applied to qubit 1. Simultaneous single-shot measurement
of each of the qubits 1 and 2 reads out the probabilities the ion trap experiments181,184 . Clearly the experiment
p00 , p10 , p01 , p11 for finding the 1+2 system in states 00, 10, will be a test of the quantum properties of the circuit
01, and 11, respectively. The full lines represent results of and the measurement process rather than a test of a Bell
numerical simulations. Adapted from McDermott et al.178 inequality.
The general principle is to (a) entangle the two qubits,
(b) measure the projection along different detector axes
(”polarization directions”), (c) perform four independent
readout of the qubits, the experiments show that readout measurements, and finally (d) analyze the correlations. If
of one qubit only leads to small perturbation of the other the detector axes are fixed, as is the case for the JJ read-
qubit178 , which is promising for multi-qubit applications. out (measuring charge or flux), one can instead rotate
each of the qubits.
Figure 62 shows the quantum network for creating a
Bell state |ψi, perform single qubit rotations Rx (φ1 ),
Rx (φ2 ), and finally perform a projective measurement on
each of the qubits along the same common fixed quan-
XIV. QUANTUM STATE ENGINEERING WITH tization axis. For each setting of the angles, (φ1 , φ2 ),
MULTI-QUBIT JJ SYSTEMS
on then performs a series of measurements obtaining the
probabilities Pij = |hij|ψi|2 = hψ|ijihij|ψi. These can
Due to the recent experimental progress, protocols be combined into the results for finding the two qubits
and algorithms for multi-qubit JJ systems can soon in the same state, Psame = P00 + P11 , or in different
begin to be implemented in order to test the perfor- states, Pdif f = P01 + P10 , and finally into the difference
mance of JJ qubit and readout circuits and to study q(φ1 , φ2 ) = Psame −Pdif f . This quantity q(φ1 , φ2 ) is eval-
the full dynamics of the quantum systems. The gen- uated in four experiments for two independent settings
eral principles are well known (see e.g.49,50 ) and have of the two angles, φ1 = (α, δ), φ2 = (β, γ), constructing
very recently been successfully applied in several other the function
systems to achieve interesting and significant results
in well-controlled quantum systems: ion-trap technol- B(α, δ; β, γ) = |q(α, β) + q(δ, β)| (14.1)
ogy has been used to entangle 4 qubits180 , implement +|q(α, γ) − q(δ, γ)|
2-qubit gates and test Bell’s inequalities181,184 , per-
form the Deutsch-Josza algorithm182 , achieve telepor- The Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CSCH)
tation (within the system)185,186,187 , and perform er- condition192 for violation√ of classical physics is then
ror correction188; quantum optics has recently demon- B > 2 (maximum value 2 2).
strated long-distance teleportation190 as well as 4-photon The application to JJ charge-phase qubits has been
entanglement190,191 . There are presently a considerable discussed by Refs.193,194 . Experimentally, a first step
theoretical literature on how to implement these and sim- in this direction has been taken by Martinis et al.178
ilar protocols and algorithms in JJ circits. Below we will who directly detected the anticorrelation in the oscillat-
describe a few examples to illustrate what may need to ing superposition of Bell states |ψ(t)i = cos(δEt/2)|10i+
be done experimentally. sin(δEt/2)|01i.
49
FIG. 64: Teleportation in a 3-qubit system without measure-

ment and classical transmission. The unknown qubit (1) to be
FIG. 63: Teleportation in a 3-qubit system. The unknown transferred is again |ψi = a|0i+b|1i. The state of qubits 1 and
qubit (1) to be teleported is |ψi = a|0i + b|1i. The result 2 are now used to control CNOT gates to restore the original
of the measurement is sent by Alice via classical channels to single-qubit state on qubit 3. As a result of the teleportation,
Bob who performs the appropriate unitary transformations to a specific but unknown state has been transferred from qubit
restore the original single-qubit state. As a result of the tele- 1 to qubit 3, leaving qubits 1 and 2 in superposition states.
portation, a specific but unknown state has been transferred
from one qubit to another.
unitary transformation back to the original state:
B. Teleportation I(a|0i + b|1i) = |ψi (14.5)

σx (b|0i + a|1i) = |ψi (14.6)
In the simplest form of teleportation an unknown σz (a|0i − b|1i) = |ψi (14.7)
single-qubit quantum state is transferred from one part σz σx (−b|0i + a|1i) = |ψi (14.8)
of the system to another, i.e. from one qubit to another,
as illustrated in Fig. 63. In Fig. 63, the initial state is corresponding to resp. no change, bit flip, phase flip
given by and bit-plus-phase flip of the original unknown state |ψi.
Alice’s measurement causes instantaneous collapse, after
(a|0i + b|1i)(|00i) (14.2) which Alice by classical means (e.g. e-mail!) can tell
Bob which unitary transformation to apply to recover
Next, applying CNOT and Hadamard gates entangles the original single-qubit state.
qubits 2 and 3 into a Bell state, An alternative approach, without measurement and
classical transmission, is shown in Fig. 64, In this case,
(a|0i + b|1i)(1/ ∗ 2)(|00i + |11i) (14.3) the final 3-qubit state is still a disentangled product state
with the correct state |ψi = a|0i + b|1i on qubit 3,
which is the resource needed for teleportation (in quan-
tum optics this corresponds to the entangled photon pair 1 1
√ (|0i + |1i) √ (|0i + |1i)(a|0i + b|1i) (14.9)
shared between Alice and Bob). One member of the Bell 2 2
pair (qubit 2) is now ”sent” to Alice and entangled with
the unknown qubit to be teleported, creating a 3-qubit while qubits 1 and 2 are now in superposition states. If
entangled state, desired, these states can be rotated back to |00i by single
qubit gates.
|00i(a|0i + b|1i) (14.4) The teleportation protocol has been implemented in
ion trap experiments186,187 (and of course in quantum
+ |01i(b|0i + a|1i)
optics189 ). A proposal for a setup for implementing a
+ |10i(a|0i − b|1i) teleportation scheme in JJ circuitry is shown in Fig. 65,
+ |11i(−b|0i + a|1i) describing a 3-qubit chain of charge-phase qubits coupled
by current-biased large JJ oscillators, in principle allow-
At this point, qubit 3 is sent to Bob, meaning that a 3- ing controllable nearest-neighbour qubit couplings158,159 :
qubit entangled state is shared between Alice and Bob. In the absence of bias currents, to first order the qubits
Moreover, at this point, in each component of this 3-qubit are non-interacting and isolated from each other. The
entangled state in Eq. (14.4), the two upper qubits are in basic two-qubit gates are achieved by switching on the
eigenstates. This means that a projective measurement bias-current-controlled qubit-qubit interaction for a given
of the these two qubits by Alice will collapse the total time. CNOT gates can be achieved in combination with
state to one of the four components. If the result of single-qubit Hadamard and phase gates158,159,160 . By ap-
Alice’s measurement is (ij), the first two qubits are in plying the sequence of gates shown in Fig. 64 (or an
the state |iji and the 3-qubit state is known, given by equivalent sequence), the unknown state will be physi-
the corresponding component in the previous equation. cally moved from the left end to the right end of the chain.
Any of these 3-qubit products can be transformed by a Moreover, by applying coupling pulses simultaneously to
50
Qubit i−1 Qubit i Qubit i+1

φ φ φ
b b b
i−2 i−1 i
φ φ φ φ φ φ
1(i−1) 2(i−1) 1i 2i 1(i+1) 2(i+1)
I bi−1 Cgi I bi
Vgi
FIG. 65: Network of loop-shaped SCT charge qubits, coupled

by large Josephson junctions. The interaction of the qubits FIG. 66: Teleportation with error correction in a 5-qubit
(i) and (i + 1) is controlled by the current bias Ibi Individ- system without measurement.
ual qubits are controlled by voltage gates, Vgi . Single-qubit
readout is performed by applying an ac current pulse to a par-
ticular JJ readout junction (not shown), or using an RF-SET
capacitively coupled to the island [27].
several qubits, one can in principle create multi-qubit

entangled states in fewer operations than with sequential
two-qubit gates195,196 as well as perform operations in
parallel on different parts of the system.
Extending the system to a five-qubit chain one can in
FIG. 67: Coding, decoding and correcting a bit flip error in
a similar way transfer an entangled two-qubit state from
a 3-qubit logic qubit. The first gate on the left represents two
the left to the right end of the chain. sequential CNOT gates. The last gate befor the garbage can
is a control-control-NOT (Toffoli) gate.
C. Qubit buses and entanglement transfer

oretical studies213,214,215,216,217,218,219 .
With entangled ”flying qubits” like photons, quan-
tum correlations can be shared in a spatially highly ex-
tended states. However, with solid-state circuitry the D. Qubit encoding and quantum error correction
issue becomes how to transfer entanglement among spa-
tially fixed qubits. Quantum error correction (QEC) (see e.g.
The standard answer is to apply entangling two-qubit Refs.49,220,221,222,223,224,225,226 ) will most certainly
gates between distant qubits. The qubit-qubit interac- be necessary for successful operation of solid state quan-
tion can be direct, e.g. dipole-dipole-type interaction be- tum information devices in order to fight decoherence.
tween distant qubits, or mediated by excitations in the The algorithmic approach to QEC follows the principles
system. The transfer can be mediated via virtual or real of classical error correction, by encoding bits to create
excitations in a passive polarizable medium, a ”system redundancy, and by devising procedures for identifying
bus”, or via a protocol for coupling qubits and bus oscil- and correcting the errors based on specific models for
lators. the errors.
A classic example of protocol-controlled oscillator- The quantum circuit in Fig. 66 illustrates QEC in
mediated coupling is the Cirac-Zoller gate197 between terms of five-qubit teleportation with bit errors, illus-
two ions sequentially entangled via exchange coupling trating restoration of the state including error correction
with the lowest vibrational mode of the ions in the trap. by measurement-controlled unitary transformation.
Another example is the Molmer-Sorensen gate198,199,200 The quantum circuit in Fig. 67 demonstrates some
which creates qubit-qubit interaction via virtual ex- essential steps of QEC in the case of one logical qubit
citation of ion-trap modes. Similar concepts for encoded in three physical qubits: The first step is to
controlling entanglement have recently been theoreti- encode the physical qubit in logical qubit basis states
cally investigated in applications to JJ-qubit-oscillator |000i and |111i by applying two CNOT gates to create a
circuits164,201,202,203,204,205,206,207,208 3-qubit entangled state:
An different approach is to allow the bus (”spin-chain”)
states to develop in time governed by the fixed bus Hamil- (a|0i + b|1i) |00i → (a|000i + b|111i) (14.10)
tonian and to tailor the interactions and the initital con-
ditions such that useful dynamics and information trans- Next, there may occur a bit-flip error in one of the qubits:
fer is achieved209,210,211,212 . Also these concepts have
been applied to JJ-circuits in a number of recent the- a|000i + b|111i (no bit f lip) (14.11)
51
qubits 2 and 3 without inducing new errors. Recently

an error correcting procedure with cooling of the system
without measurement has been proposed227 .
Phase flips (sign changes), e.g. a|0i+ b|1i → a|0i− b|1i
can be handled by similar 3-qubit encoding, decoding and
correction. Combining these two approaches gives the 9-
qubit Shor code220 for correcting also combined bit and
phase flips, e.g. a|0i + b|1i → a|1i − b|0i. The minimum
code to achieve the same thing is a 5-qubit code221 and
there are more efficient codes with 7 qubits223,224,225 .
FIG. 68: Coding, decoding and correcting a bit flip error in A related approach to fighting decoherence is to en-
3-qubit logic qubit. code the quantum information in noiseless subsystems,
so called Decoherence Free Subspaces (DFS)124,125,228,229
A different approach is the so called ”bang-bang”
a|100i + b|011i (bit f lip in qubit 1) (14.12) dynamic correction method230,231,232,233,234,235 , basically
a|010i + b|101i (bit f lip in qubit 2) (14.13) corresponding to very frequent application of the spin-
a|001i + b|110i (bit f lip in qubit 3) (14.14) echo technique. This is related to the quantum Zeno
effect (see e.g. Ref.236 , describing situations where the
The next step applies a number of disentangling CNOT quantum system via very strong interaction with the en-
gates to check for the type of error. For the four possible vironment is forced into a subspace from where it cannot
states above we obtain: decay.
In this Section we have restricted the discussion to
a|000i + b|111i → (a|0i + b|1i) |00i (14.15) a few different protocols for quantum state engineering,
a|100i + b|011i → (a|1i + b|0i) |11i (14.16) representing basic steps in algorithms for solving specific
a|000i + b|111i → (a|0i + b|1i) |10i (14.17) computational problems. For a discussion of quantum
algorithms and computational complexity we refer to the
a|000i + b|111i → (a|0i + b|1i) |01i (14.18) books by Nielsen and Chuang49 and Gruska50 , and to
At this stage, qubits 2 and 3 have become independent the original papers. We would however like to mention a
eigenstates, just as in teleportation. The correspond- few papers discussing how to implement a few well-know
ing eigenvalues are called syndrome, and indicate which algorithms in JJ circuitry. The basics of quantum gates
corrective operations should be implemented. Remark- in JJ-circuits can be found in e.g. Refs.42,237,238 . The
ably, in two of the above bit-flipped cases, with error Deutsch-Josza (DJ) and related algorithms have been
syndromes ((01) and (10), qubit 1 is now correct, the er- discussed by Siewert and Fazio238 describing a 3-qubit
ror residing in qubits 2 or 3 in the workspace (”ancillas”). DJ implementation with three charge-phase qubits con-
The only case where a transformation is needed is when nected in a ring via phase-coupling JJs with variable
the error syndrom is (11), which corresponds to a bit Josephson coupling energy (SQUIDS), and by Schuch
flip in qubit 1, to be corrected with a CCNOT (control- and Siewert analyzing a 4-qubit implementation239 . For
control-NOT, or Toffoli, gate), controlled by the truth the Grover search algorithm there seems to be nothing
table of an AND gate. In Fig. 67 we have used a com- published on the implementation in JJ circuitry. Con-
pact single-gate notation for CCNOT, while in reality it cerning Shor’s factorization algorithm there is a recent
must be implemented through a sequence of eight two- paper by Vartiainen et al.242 . There is also recent work
qubit gates49 (there is no direct three-qubit interaction on optimization of two-qubit gates243 , and relations be-
in the Hamiltonian). At this stage, the 3-qubit state is tween error correction and entanglement208 .
completely disentangled into a product state. Finally there are a number of papers connecting JJ-
The final step consists in re-encoding the physical qubit ciruits wih geometric phases and holononomic quantum
1 to the logical qubit a|000i + b|111i. However, although computing246,247,248,249 and on adiabatic computation252
the physical qubit 1 is always correct at this stage, the and Cooper pair pumps250,251 . For a recent paper dis-
workspace is not. This can be handled in a number of cussing the universality of adiabatic quantum computing,
ways. Figure 67 dumps the ”hot” qubits in the garbage see Aharonov et al.253 .
can (i.e. leaves them, or forces them, to relax), and
re-encodes with fresh qubits from a larger workspace.
Alternatively, Fig. 68 describes a variation where the old XV. CONCLUSION AND PERSPECTIVES
qubits 2 and 3 are re-initialized by entanglement with a
measurement device which then dissipates the heat from Within 5 years, engineered JJ quantum systems with
the bitflip and the error correction procedure. 5-10 qubits will most likely begin seriously to test the
In both of these cases, as described, we need a total scalability of solid state QI processors.
workspace with five qubits. In principle, however, one For this to happen, a few decisive initial steps and
can do with three qubits if we can rapidly re-initialize breakthroughs are needed and expected: The first essen-
52
tial step is to develop JJ-hardware with long coherence Anticrossing - Lifting of degeneracy (level crossing) of
time to study the quantum dynamics of a two-qubit cir- quantum levels during variation of the system parameters
cuit and to perform a ”test” of Bell’s inequalities (or when an interaction is switched on
rather the JJ-ciruitry) by creating entangled two-qubit Average measurement - Measurement of an expecta-
Bell states and performing simultaneous projective mea- tion value of a dynamic variable in a certain state
surements on the two qubits. Bloch sphere - Geometrical representation of the man-
A first breakthrough would be to perform a significant ifold of quantum states of a two-level system as points
number of single- and two-qubit gates on a 3-qubit clus- on the unit sphere.
ter to entangle three qubits. Combined with simultane- Bloch vector - Normalized state vector of a two-level
ous projective readout of individual qubits, not disturb- system represented by a radial unit vector of the Bloch
ing unmeasured qubits, this would form a basis for the sphere.
first solid-state experiments with teleportation, quantum Charging energy - Electrostatic energy of a capacitor
error correction (QEC), and elementary quantum algo- charged with a single electron (e) (or a single Cooper pair
rithms. This will provide a platform for scaling up the (2e)).
system to 10 qubits. Charge qubit - Superconducting qubit based on a a
This may not look very impressive but nevertheless single Cooper pair box (SCB), whose computational basis
would be an achievement far beyond expectations only consists of the two charge states of the superconducting
a decade back. The NMR successes, e.g. running Shor- island.
type algorithms using a molecule with 7 qubits76 , are Charge-phase qubit - Superconducting qubit based on
based on technologies developed during 50 years using a single Cooper pair box (SCB) whose charging energy is
natural systems with naturally long coherence times. of the order of the Josephson energy of tunnel junctions
Similarly, semiconductor technologies have developed for CNOT gate - Controlled-NOT gate: two-qubit gate
50 years to reach today’s scale and performance of clas- which changes or does not change the state of a target
sical computers. It is therefore to be expected that QI qubit depending on the state of a controlling qubit.
technologies will need several decades to develop truly Cooper pair - Bound state of two electrons (2e), the
significant potential. Moreover, in the same way as for elementary charge carrier in superconducting equilibrium
the classical technologies, QI technologies will most prob- state.
ably develop slowly step by step, ”qubit by qubit”, which Coulomb blockade - Suppression of current through
in itself will be an exponential development. a tunnel junction or small metallic island due to large
Moreover, in future scalable information processors, charging energy associated with a passage of a single elec-
different physical realizations and technologies might be tron.
combined into hybrid systems to achieve fast processing CPHASE gate - Controlled-phase gate: two-qubit gate
in one system and long coherence and long-time informa- which changes or does not change the phase of a target
tion storage in another system. In this way, solid state qubit depending on the state of a controlling qubit.
technologies might be combined with ion trap physics to Decoherence - Evolution of a quantum system, inter-
build large microtrap systems254 , which in turn might be acting with its environment; cannot be described with
coupled to superconducting Josephson junctions proces- a unitary operator; consists of decay of phase coherence
sors via microwave transmission lines255 . (dephasing) and/or changing of level population (relax-
ation).
Density matrix - Characteristics of a quantum system,
Acknowledgments which contains full statistical information about the state
of the system.
This work has been supported by European Commis- Dephasing - Decay of phase coherence of a superpo-
sion through the IST-SQUBIT and SQUBIT-2 projects, sition state, represented by decreasing off-diagonal ele-
by the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Founda- ments of the density matrix.
tion for Strategic Research and the Royal Academy of Entanglement - Specific non-local coupling of quantum
Sciences. systems when the wave function of whole system cannot
be presented as a product of partial wave functions
Flux qubit - Superconducting qubit based on a SQUID,
GLOSSARY whose computational basis consists of the two states of
the SQUID having opposite directions of the induced
Adiabatic evolution - Development of a quantum sys- flux.
tem without transitions among the quantum levels. Hadamard gate - Transformation of computational ba-
Algorithm - Finite sequence of logical operations, which sis states of a single qubit to equally weighted superpo-
produces a solution for a given problem. sitions of the basis states (cat states).
Level crossing - Degeneracy of quantum levels appear- Holonomic quantum computation - Using the geo-
ing at a certain value of a controlling system parameter metric phases when a quantum system is taken around a
(e.g. gate voltage, bias flux, etc.). closed circuit in the space of control parameters.
53
Gate operation - Controlled transformation of the state resonant driving perturbation, consists of periodic oscil-
of one or several qubits; a basic element of an algorithm. lation of the level populations with the frequency propor-
Josephson effect - Non-dissipative current flow be- tional to the amplitude of the perturbation.
tween two superconductors separated by a non- Readout - Measurement of a qubit state.
superconducting material (insulator, normal metal, etc.). Relaxation - Change of population of the energy eigen-
Josephson junction - Junction of two superconductors, states resulting in approaching the equilibrium popula-
which exhibits the Josephson effect. tion.
Josephson critical current - Maximal value of the SCB - Single Cooper pair Box: superconducting analog
Josephson current maintained by a particular junction. of SEB, where it is energetically favorable to have only
Josephson energy - Inductive energy of a Josephson paired electrons on the island.
junction proportional to the critical Josephson current. SCT - Single Cooper pair Transistor: a superconducting
π pulse - High frequency control pulse with a specific device containing a small island whose charging energy is
duration applied to a qubit, producing inversion of the controlled by an electrostatic gate electrode to increase
qubit level populations (π rotation; qubit flip) or decrease current flowing through the island from one
π/2 pulse - High frequency control pulse with a specific large electrode (source) to another (drain).
duration applied to a qubit, typically tipping the Bloch SEB - Single Electron Box: small metallic island con-
vector from a pole to the equator, or from the equator to nected to a large electrode via resistive tunnel junction,
a pole, on the Bloch sphere. whose charging energy hence amount of trapped electrons
Phase gate - Single qubit gate, transforms a superpo- is controlled by an electrostatic gate.
sition of two quantum states into another superposition SET - Single Electron Transistor: a device containing a
with different relative phase of the states small island whose charging energy is controlled by an
Precession - Dynamic evolution of a two-level system in electrostatic gate electrode to increase or decrease cur-
a superposition state, i.e. linear combination of energy rent flowing through the island from one large electrode
eigenstates. (source) to another (drain).
QND measurement - Quantum Non-Demolition Mea- rf-SET - SET driven by an rf signal, is used as an ul-
surement: measurement of a state of a quantum system, tra sensitive electrometer by monitoring a linear response
which does not destroy the quantum state and makes function of the SET, which is sensitive to the electrostatic
possible repeated measurements of the same state. gate potential.
QPC - Quantum Point Contact: a constriction in a con- SQUID - Superconducting Quantum Interferometer De-
ductor with ballistic transport through a small number vice: a device consisting of a one or more Josephson junc-
of conduction channels. tions included in a superconducting loop.
Qubit - Quantum two-level system; basic element of a dc-SQUID - SQUID containing two Josephson junc-
quantum processor. tions.
PCQ - Persistent Current Qubit: synonymous with flux rf-SQUID - SQUID containing one Josephson junction.
qubit. Single-shot measurement - A measurement which
Rabi oscillation - Dynamics of two-level system under gives an ”up/down” answer in one single detection event.
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Superconducting Quantum Circuits, Qubits and Computing

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Superconducting Quantum Circuits, Qubits and Computing

G. Wendin and V.S. Shumeiko

SE-41296 Gothenburg, Sweden

Table of contents Variable inductive coupling

I. INTRODUCTION tance of quantum computers on any time scale, but there

(initialized to zero) and the heat irreversibly dissipated

ducting systems have presently the undisputable advan-

III. BASICS OF QUANTUM COMPUTATION

A. Conditions for quantum information processing

cos θ2 − sin 2θ |ψ(t)i = c1 (t)|0...00i + c2 (t)|0...01i (3.5)

ih̄∂t U (t, t0 ) = ĤU (t, t0 ) (3.14) 1X

The Schrödinger equation is then given by

where giving a 3-vector representation for the Hamiltonian,

To study the time-evolution of a general state, a conve-

that the system is excited by a Fourier spectrum with an

To find the coefficients we project onto the charge basis, a) b)

and use the explict results for the energy eigenstates to

Let us assume that the qubit was initially in the ground

eigenstates, processes, relaxation and dephasing, are referred to as

U(φ) current through the Josephson element has the form85 ,

where Ic is the critical Josephson current, i.e.

where EJ = h̄/2e Ic is the Josephson energy. This po- L

the potential energy has two degenerate minima, which and

The effect of the gate electrode is only essential for the

Combining this kinetic energy with the potential en-

pair of levels, well separated from the spectrum of higher

A. Single Josephson Junction (JJ) qubit

The simplest qubit realization is a current biased JJ

particle confinement, rigorously speaking, is impossi-

current is distributed between the two junctions. The

E ĤSCT = ĤSCB (φ− ) + Ĥosc (φ̃) + Ĥint . (7.8)

ĤSCB (φ− ) is the SCB Hamiltonian (6.19) with the flux

E subspace spanned by these two levels. The starting point

FIG. 16: Double-well potential of the rf-SQUID with de-

Ur Ul Ĥ|Ei = E|Ei, (7.15)

|Ei = a|li + b|ri. (7.16)

0 φ The qubit Hamiltonian is given by the matrix elements

FIG. 18: Persistent current flux qubit (PCQ) with 3 junctions.

as shown in Fig. 15. However, for the flux qubit the

The superconducting qubits that have been discussed

plicated JJ networks have been discussed, which have

Ĥosc [φ] = EC n̂ + (EL /2)(φ − φe )2 . Comparing this equa-

VIII. QUBIT READOUT AND MEASUREMENT

In this section we present a number of proposed, and

To illustrate the threshold-detection method, let us h̄2 φ̇2 m h̄

to the SCT Lagrangian (generalized Eq. (5.30), cf. Eqs.

FIG. 29: Fixed phase coupling of charge qubits

This interaction term is diagonal in the charge basis, and

FIG. 31: Two charge qubits coupled to a common LC-

Instead of the capacitor, the charge qubits can be con-

Generally, in the qubit eigenbasis, |0i and |1i, all ma-

difference φ across the oscillator,

Ĥosc = ECosc n̂2 + EL φ2 /2, (9.22) ĤSCT = EC (n̂− − ng )2 + EC n̂2+

With these approximations, the Hamiltonian of the

FIG. 34: Coupled charge qubits with current-controlled phase

Variable capacitive coupling of charge qubits based on

ψ(t > t3 ) = cos θ1 cos θ2 |100i + sin θ2 eiβ |001i

ψ(t > t3 ) = |0i cos θ1 eiβ |01i) + sin θ1 eiα |10i .