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1. Digital coherent control of a superconducting qubit

   Leonard Jr., E.; Beck, M.A.; Nelson, JJ; Christensen, B.G.; Thorbeck, T.; Howington, C.; Opremcak, A.; Pechenezhskiy, I.V.; Dodge, K.; Dupuis, N.P.; et al (June 2018, arXiv.org)

   High-fidelity gate operations are essential to the realization of a fault-tolerant quantum computer. In addition, the physical resources required to implement gates must scale efficiently with system size. A longstanding goal of the superconducting qubit community is the tight integration of a superconducting quantum circuit with a proximal classical cryogenic control system. Here we implement coherent control of a superconducting transmon qubit using a Single Flux Quantum (SFQ) pulse driver cofabricated on the qubit chip. The pulse driver delivers trains of quantized flux pulses to the qubit through a weak capacitive coupling; coherent rotations of the qubit state are realized when the pulse-to-pulse timing is matched to a multiple of the qubit oscillation period. We measure the fidelity of SFQ-based gates to be ~95% using interleaved randomized benchmarking. Gate fidelities are limited by quasiparticle generation in the dissipative SFQ driver. We characterize the dissipative and dispersive contributions of the quasiparticle admittance and discuss mitigation strategies to suppress quasiparticle poisoning. These results open the door to integration of large-scale superconducting qubit arrays with SFQ control elements for low-latency feedback and stabilization. 

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2. Speed limits of two-qubit gates with qudits

   Basyildiz, Bora; Jameson, Casey; Gong, Zhexuan (December 2023, arXiv)

   The speed of elementary quantum gates ultimately sets the limit on the speed at which quantum circuits can operate. For a fixed physical interaction strength between two qubits, the speed of any two-qubit gate is limited even with arbitrarily fast single-qubit gates. In this work, we explore the possibilities of speeding up two-qubit gates beyond such a limit by expanding our computational space outside the qubit subspace, which is experimentally relevant for qubits encoded in multi-level atoms or anharmonic oscillators. We identify an optimal theoretical bound for the speed limit of a two-qubit gate achieved using two qudits with a bounded interaction strength and arbitrarily fast single-qudit gates. In addition, we find an experimentally feasible protocol using two parametrically coupled superconducting transmons that achieves this theoretical speed limit in a non-trivial way. We also consider practical scenarios with limited single-qudit drive strengths and off-resonant transitions. For such scenarios, we develop an open-source, machine learning assisted, quantum optimal control algorithm that can achieve a speedup close to the theoretical limit with near-perfect gate fidelity. This work opens up a new avenue to speed up two-qubit gates when the physical interaction strength between qubits cannot be easily increased while extra states outside the qubit subspace can be well controlled. 

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3. Logical quantum processor based on reconfigurable atom arrays

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06927-3  

   Bluvstein, Dolev; Evered, Simon J.; Geim, Alexandra A.; Li, Sophie H.; Zhou, Hengyun; Manovitz, Tom; Ebadi, Sepehr; Cain, Madelyn; Kalinowski, Marcin; Hangleiter, Dominik; et al (December 2023, Nature)

   Abstract Suppressing errors is the central challenge for useful quantum computing¹, requiring quantum error correction (QEC)^2–6for large-scale processing. However, the overhead in the realization of error-corrected ‘logical’ qubits, in which information is encoded across many physical qubits for redundancy^2–4, poses substantial challenges to large-scale logical quantum computing. Here we report the realization of a programmable quantum processor based on encoded logical qubits operating with up to 280 physical qubits. Using logical-level control and a zoned architecture in reconfigurable neutral-atom arrays⁷, our system combines high two-qubit gate fidelities⁸, arbitrary connectivity^7,9, as well as fully programmable single-qubit rotations and mid-circuit readout^10–15. Operating this logical processor with various types of encoding, we demonstrate improvement of a two-qubit logic gate by scaling surface-code⁶distance fromd = 3 tod = 7, preparation of colour-code qubits with break-even fidelities⁵, fault-tolerant creation of logical Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) states and feedforward entanglement teleportation, as well as operation of 40 colour-code qubits. Finally, using 3D [[8,3,2]] code blocks^16,17, we realize computationally complex sampling circuits¹⁸with up to 48 logical qubits entangled with hypercube connectivity¹⁹with 228 logical two-qubit gates and 48 logical CCZ gates²⁰. We find that this logical encoding substantially improves algorithmic performance with error detection, outperforming physical-qubit fidelities at both cross-entropy benchmarking and quantum simulations of fast scrambling^21,22. These results herald the advent of early error-corrected quantum computation and chart a path towards large-scale logical processors. 

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4. Pulse sequences for manipulating spin states of molecular radical-pair-based electron spin qubit systems for quantum information applications.

   https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0145278  

   Pazera, G.; Kryzaniak, m.D and (June 2023, Journal of chemical physics)

   Molecular qubits are an emerging platform in quantum information science (QIS) due to the unmatched structural control that chemical design and synthesis provide compared to other leading qubit technologies. This theoretical study investigates pulse sequence protocols for spin-correlated radical pairs (SCRPs), which are important molecular spin qubit pair (SQP) candidates. Here, we introduce improved microwave pulse protocols for enhancing the execution times of quantum logic gates based on SQPs. Signi ficantly, this study demonstrates that the proposed pulse sequences selectively remove certain contributions from nuclear spin effects on spin dynamics, which are a common source of decoherence. Additionally, we have analyzed the factors that control the fidelity of the SQP spin state following application of the CNOT gate. It was found that higher magnetic fi elds introduce a high frequency oscillation in the fidelity. Thereupon, it is suggested that further research should be geared towards executing quantum gates at lower magnetic field values. In addition, an absolute bound of the fidelity outcome due to decoherence is determined, which clearly identifies the important factors that control gate execution. Finally, examples of the application of these pulse sequences to SQPs are described. 

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5. High-fidelity parallel entangling gates on a neutral-atom quantum computer

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06481-y  

   Evered, Simon J; Bluvstein, Dolev; Kalinowski, Marcin; Ebadi, Sepehr; Manovitz, Tom; Zhou, Hengyun; Li, Sophie H; Geim, Alexandra A; Wang, Tout T; Maskara, Nishad; et al (October 2023, Nature)

   Abstract The ability to perform entangling quantum operations with low error rates in a scalable fashion is a central element of useful quantum information processing¹. Neutral-atom arrays have recently emerged as a promising quantum computing platform, featuring coherent control over hundreds of qubits^2,3and any-to-any gate connectivity in a flexible, dynamically reconfigurable architecture⁴. The main outstanding challenge has been to reduce errors in entangling operations mediated through Rydberg interactions⁵. Here we report the realization of two-qubit entangling gates with 99.5% fidelity on up to 60 atoms in parallel, surpassing the surface-code threshold for error correction^6,7. Our method uses fast, single-pulse gates based on optimal control⁸, atomic dark states to reduce scattering⁹and improvements to Rydberg excitation and atom cooling. We benchmark fidelity using several methods based on repeated gate applications^10,11, characterize the physical error sources and outline future improvements. Finally, we generalize our method to design entangling gates involving a higher number of qubits, which we demonstrate by realizing low-error three-qubit gates^12,13. By enabling high-fidelity operation in a scalable, highly connected system, these advances lay the groundwork for large-scale implementation of quantum algorithms¹⁴, error-corrected circuits⁷and digital simulations¹⁵. 

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