Search

Engineering high-order nonlinearities while suppressing lower-order terms is crucial for quantum error correction and state control in bosonic systems, yet it remains an outstanding challenge. Here, we introduce a general framework of Nonlinearity-Engineered Multi-loop SQUID (NEMS) device, enabling the realization of arbitrary nonlinearities by tuning fluxes in multiple loops within superconducting circuits. We demonstrate specific examples of NEMS devices that selectively engineer pure cubic, quartic, and quintic interactions with suppressed parasitic couplings, showing great promise for realizing Kerr-cat bias-preserving {\scshape cnot} gates and stabilizing four-leg cat qubits. By opening new avenues for tailoring nonlinear Hamiltonians of superconducting devices, this work enables sophisticated and precise manipulation of bosonic modes, with potential applications in quantum computation, simulation, and sensing., Comment: 26 pages, 13 figures

The noise-biased Kerr-cat qubit is an attractive candidate for fault-tolerant quantum computation; however, its initialization faces challenges due to the squeezing pump-induced frequency shift (PIFS). Here, we propose and demonstrate a dynamic compensation method to mitigate the effect of PIFS during the Kerr-cat qubit initialization. Utilizing a novel nonlinearity-engineered triple-loop SQUID device, we realize a stabilized Kerr-cat qubit and validate the advantages of the dynamic compensation method by improving the initialization fidelity from 57% to 78%, with a projected fidelity of 91% after excluding state preparation and measurement errors. Our results not only advance the practical implementation of Kerr-cat qubits, but also provide valuable insights into the fundamental adiabatic dynamics of these systems. This work paves the way for scalable quantum processors that leverage the bias-preserving properties of Kerr-cat qubits.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel protocol for transferring quantum states between superconducting cavities using only continuous two-mode squeezing interactions, without exchange of photonic excitations between cavities. This approach conceptually resembles quantum teleportation, where quantum information is transferred between different nodes without directly transmitting carrier photons. In contrast to the discrete operations of entanglement and Bell-state measurement in teleportation, our scheme is symmetric and continuous. We experimentally realize coherent and bidirectional transfer of arbitrary quantum states, including bosonic quantum error correction codes. Our results offer new insights into the quantum state transfer and quantum teleportation. In particular, our demonstration validates a new approach to realize quantum transducers, and might find applications in a wide range of physical platforms.

Quantum state tomography, a process that reconstructs a quantum state from measurements on an ensemble of identically prepared copies, plays a crucial role in benchmarking quantum devices. However, brute-force approaches to quantum state tomography would become impractical for large systems, as the required resources scale exponentially with the system size. Here, we explore a machine learning approach and report an experimental demonstration of reconstructing quantum states based on neural network generative models with an array of programmable superconducting transmon qubits. In particular, we experimentally prepare the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states and random states up to five qubits and demonstrate that the machine learning approach can efficiently reconstruct these states with the number of required experimental samples scaling linearly with system size. Our results experimentally showcase the intriguing potential for exploiting machine learning techniques in validating and characterizing complex quantum devices, offering a valuable guide for the future development of quantum technologies.

The discrimination of quantum operations has long been an intriguing challenge, with theoretical research significantly advancing our understanding of the quantum features in discriminating quantum objects. This challenge is closely related to the discrimination of quantum states, and proof-of-principle demonstrations of the latter have already been realized using optical photons. However, the experimental demonstration of discriminating general quantum operations, including both unitary and non-unitary operations, has remained elusive. In general quantum systems, especially those with high dimensions, the preparation of arbitrary quantum states and the implementation of arbitrary quantum operations and generalized measurements are non-trivial tasks. Here, for the first time, we experimentally demonstrate the optimal unambiguous discrimination of up to 6 displacement operators and the unambiguous discrimination of non-unitary quantum operations. Our results demonstrate powerful tools for experimental research in quantum information processing and are expected to stimulate a wide range of valuable applications in the field of quantum sensing., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables

Entanglement represents one of the most important conceptual advances in physics during the last century and is also one of the most essential resources in quantum information science. However, entanglement is fragile and its potential advantages in applications are hindered by decoherence in practice. Here, we experimentally realize entangled logical qubits (ELQ) with a bosonic quantum module by encoding quantum information into spatially separated microwave modes. The entanglement is protected by repetitive quantum error correction, and the coherence time of the purified ELQ via error detection is improved by 45$\%$ compared with the unprotected ELQ and exceeds that of the entangled physical qubits. In addition, violation of the Bell inequality by logical qubits is demonstrated for the first time with the measured Bell signal B=2.250$\pm$0.019 after purification, surpassing the classical bound by 13 standard deviations. The protected ELQ could be applied in future explorations of quantum foundations and applications of quantum networks., Comment: 26 pages, 15 figures, 8 tables

Deep learning and quantum computing have achieved dramatic progresses in recent years. The interplay between these two fast-growing fields gives rise to a new research frontier of quantum machine learning. In this work, we report the first experimental demonstration of training deep quantum neural networks via the backpropagation algorithm with a six-qubit programmable superconducting processor. In particular, we show that three-layer deep quantum neural networks can be trained efficiently to learn two-qubit quantum channels with a mean fidelity up to 96.0% and the ground state energy of molecular hydrogen with an accuracy up to 93.3% compared to the theoretical value. In addition, six-layer deep quantum neural networks can be trained in a similar fashion to achieve a mean fidelity up to 94.8% for learning single-qubit quantum channels. Our experimental results explicitly showcase the advantages of deep quantum neural networks, including quantum analogue of the backpropagation algorithm and less stringent coherence-time requirement for their constituting physical qubits, thus providing a valuable guide for quantum machine learning applications with both near-term and future quantum devices., Comment: 7 pages (main text) + 11 pages (Supplementary Information), 10 figures

A photonic transistor that can switch or amplify an optical signal with a single gate photon requires strong non-linear interaction at the single-photon level. Circuit quantum electrodynamics provides great flexibility to generate such an interaction, and thus could serve as an effective platform to realize a high-performance single-photon transistor. Here we demonstrate such a photonic transistor in the microwave regime. Our device consists of two microwave cavities dispersively coupled to a superconducting qubit. A single gate photon imprints a phase shift on the qubit state through one cavity, and further shifts the resonance frequency of the other cavity. In this way, we realize a gain of the transistor up to 53.4 dB, with an extinction ratio better than 20 dB. Our device outperforms previous devices in the optical regime by several orders in terms of optical gain, which indicates a great potential for application in the field of microwave quantum photonics and quantum information processing.

Quantum error correction (QEC) aims to protect logical qubits from noises by utilizing the redundancy of a large Hilbert space, where an error, once it occurs, can be detected and corrected in real time. In most QEC codes, a logical qubit is encoded in some discrete variables, e.g., photon numbers. Such encoding schemes make the codewords orthogonal, so that the encoded quantum information can be unambiguously extracted after processing. Based on such discrete-variable encodings, repetitive QEC demonstrations have been reported on various platforms, but there the lifetime of the encoded logical qubit is still shorter than that of the best available physical qubit in the entire system, which represents a break-even point that needs to be surpassed for any QEC code to be of practical use. Here we demonstrate a QEC procedure with a logical qubit encoded in photon-number states of a microwave cavity, dispersively coupled to an ancilla superconducting qubit. By applying a pulse featuring a tailored frequency comb to the ancilla, we can repetitively extract the error syndrome with high fidelity and perform error correction with feedback control accordingly, thereby exceeding the break-even point by about 16% lifetime enhancement. Our work illustrates the potential of the hardware-efficient discrete-variable QEC codes towards a reliable quantum information processor., Comment: Main text: 8 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; Supplement: 12 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables

Generalized cat states represent arbitrary superpositions of coherent states, which are of great importance in various quantum information processing protocols. Here we demonstrate a versatile approach to creating generalized itinerant cat states in the microwave domain, by reflecting coherent state photons from a microwave cavity containing a superconducting qubit. We show that, with a coherent control of the qubit state, a full control over the coherent state superposition can be realized. The prepared cat states are verified through quantum state tomography of the qubit state dependent reflection photon field. We further quantify quantum coherence in the prepared cat states based on the resource theory, revealing a good experimental control on the coherent state superpositions. The photon number statistic and the squeezing properties are also analyzed. Remarkably, fourth-order squeezing is observed in the experimental states. Those results open up new possibilities of applying generalized cat states for the purpose of quantum information processing., Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures

Machine learning can be substantially powered by a quantum computer owing to its huge Hilbert space and inherent quantum parallelism. In the pursuit of quantum advantages for machine learning with noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices, it was proposed that the learning model can be designed in an end-to-end fashion, i.e., the quantum ansatz is parameterized by directly manipulable control pulses without circuit design and compilation. Such gate-free models are hardware friendly and can fully exploit limited quantum resources. Here, we report the first experimental realization of quantum end-to-end machine learning on a superconducting processor. The trained model can achieve 98% recognition accuracy for two handwritten digits (via two qubits) and 89% for four digits (via three qubits) in the MNIST (Mixed National Institute of Standards and Technology) database. The experimental results exhibit the great potential of quantum end-to-end learning for resolving complex real-world tasks when more qubits are available., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures and supplement

Thin-film gallium nitride (GaN) as a proven piezoelectric material is a promising platform for the phononic integrated circuits, which hold great potential for scalable information processing processors. Here, an unsuspended traveling phononic resonator based on high-acoustic-index-contrast mechanism is realized in GaN-on-Sapphire with a frequency up to 5 GHz, which matches the typical superconducting qubit frequency. A sixfold increment in quality factor was found when temperature decreases from room temperature ($Q=5000$) to $7\,\mathrm{K}$ ($Q=30000$) and thus a frequency-quality factor product of $1.5\times10^{14}$ is obtained. Higher quality factors are available when the fabrication process is further optimized. Our system shows great potential in hybrid quantum devices via circuit quantum acoustodynamics.

Unsuspended phononic integrated circuits have been proposed for on-chip acoustic information processing. Limited by the operation mechanism of a conventional interdigital transducer, the excitation of the quasi-Love mode in GaN-on-Sapphire is inefficient and thus a high-efficiency Rayleigh-to-Love mode converter is of great significance for future integrated phononic devices. Here, we propose a high-efficiency and robust phononic mode converter based on an adiabatic conversion mechanism. Utilizing the anisotropic elastic property of the substrate, the adiabatic mode converter is realized by a simple tapered phononic waveguide. A conversion efficiency exceeds $98\%$ with a $3\,\mathrm{dB}$ bandwidth of $1.7\,\mathrm{GHz}$ can be realized for phononic waveguides working at GHz frequency band, and excellent tolerance to the fabrication errors is also numerically validated. The device that we proposed can be useful in both classical and quantum phononic information processing, and the adiabatic mechanism could be generalized to other phononic device designs.

Schr\"odinger's cat originates from the famous thought experiment querying the counterintuitive quantum superposition of macroscopic objects. As a natural extension, several "cats" (quasi-classical objects) can be prepared into coherent quantum superposition states, which is known as multipartite cat states demonstrating quantum entanglement among macroscopically distinct objects. Here we present a highly scalable approach to deterministically create flying multipartite Schr\"odinger cat states, by reflecting coherent state photons from a microwave cavity containing a superconducting qubit. We perform full quantum state tomography on the cat states with up to four photonic modes and confirm the existence of quantum entanglement among them. We also witness the hybrid entanglement between discrete-variable states (the qubit) and continuous-variable states (the flying multipartite cat) through a joint quantum state tomography. Our work demonstrates an important experimental control method in the microwave region and provides an enabling step for implementing a series of quantum metrology and quantum information processing protocols based on cat states.

Digital quantum simulators provide a diversified tool for solving the evolution of quantum systems with complicated Hamiltonians and hold great potential for a wide range of applications. Although much attention is paid to the unitary evolution of closed quantum systems, dissipation and noise are vital in understanding the dynamics of practical quantum systems. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a digital simulation of an open quantum system in a controllable Markovian environment with the assistance of a single ancillary qubit. By Trotterizing the quantum Liouvillians, the continuous evolution of an open quantum system is effectively realized, and its application in error mitigation is demonstrated by adjusting the simulated noise intensities. High-order Trotter for open quantum dynamics is also experimentally investigated and shows higher accuracy. Our results represent a significant step towards hardware-efficient simulation of open quantum systems and error mitigation in quantum algorithms in noisy intermediate-scale quantum systems., Comment: main text 6 pages, 4 figures; supplementary material 9 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables

The ability to manipulate quantum systems lies at the heart of the development of quantum technology. The ultimate goal of quantum control is to realize arbitrary quantum operations (AQuOs) for all possible open quantum system dynamics. However, the demanding extra physical resources impose great obstacles. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a universal approach of AQuO on a photonic qudit with minimum physical resource of a two-level ancilla and a $\log_{2}d$-scale circuit depth for a $d$-dimensional system. The AQuO is then applied in quantum trajectory simulation for quantum subspace stabilization and quantum Zeno dynamics, as well as incoherent manipulation and generalized measurements of the qudit. Therefore, the demonstrated AQuO for complete quantum control would play an indispensable role in quantum information science., Comment: main text 7 pages, 3 figures; supplementary material 13 pages, 8 figures

Quantum correlations in observables of multiple systems not only are of fundamental interest, but also play a key role in quantum information processing. As a signature of these correlations, the violation of Bell inequalities has not been demonstrated with multipartite hybrid entanglement involving both continuous and discrete variables. Here we create a five-partite entangled state with three superconducting transmon qubits and two photonic qubits, each encoded in the mesoscopic field of a microwave cavity. We reveal the quantum correlations among these distinct elements by joint Wigner tomography of the two cavity fields conditional on the detection of the qubits and by test of a five-partite Bell inequality. The measured Bell signal is $8.381\pm0.038$, surpassing the bound of 8 for a four-partite entanglement imposed by quantum correlations by 10 standard deviations, demonstrating the genuine five-partite entanglement in a hybrid quantum system., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures and supplement

Chest X-rays are the most common diagnostic exams in emergency rooms and hospitals. There has been a surge of work on automatic interpretation of chest X-rays using deep learning approaches after the availability of large open source chest X-ray dataset from NIH. However, the labels are not sufficiently rich and descriptive for training classification tools. Further, it does not adequately address the findings seen in Chest X-rays taken in anterior-posterior (AP) view which also depict the placement of devices such as central vascular lines and tubes. In this paper, we present a new chest X-ray benchmark database of 73 rich sentence-level descriptors of findings seen in AP chest X-rays. We describe our method of obtaining these findings through a semi-automated ground truth generation process from crowdsourcing of clinician annotations. We also present results of building classifiers for these findings that show that such higher granularity labels can also be learned through the framework of deep learning classifiers., Comment: This paper was accepted by the IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) 2019

To realize fault-tolerant quantum computing, it is necessary to store quantum information in logical qubits with error correction functions, realized by distributing a logical state among multiple physical qubits or by encoding it in the Hilbert space of a high-dimensional system. Quantum gate operations between these error-correctable logical qubits, which are essential for implementation of any practical quantum computational task, have not been experimentally demonstrated yet. Here we demonstrate a geometric method for realizing controlled-phase gates between two logical qubits encoded in photonic fields stored in cavities. The gates are realized by dispersively coupling an ancillary superconducting qubit to these cavities and driving it to make a cyclic evolution depending on the joint photonic state of the cavities, which produces a conditional geometric phase. We first realize phase gates for photonic qubits with the logical basis states encoded in two quasiorthogonal coherent states, which have important implications for continuous-variable-based quantum computation. Then we use this geometric method to implement a controlled-phase gate between two binomially encoded logical qubits, which have an error-correctable function., Comment: main text: 7 pages, 4 figures; supplement: 6 pages, 5 figures

Logical qubit encoding and quantum error correction (QEC) have been experimentally demonstrated in various physical systems with multiple physical qubits, however, logical operations are challenging due to the necessary nonlocal operations. Alternatively, logical qubits with bosonic-mode-encoding are of particular interest because their QEC protection is hardware efficient, but gate operations on QEC protected logical qubits remain elusive. Here, we experimentally demonstrate full control on a single logical qubit with a binomial bosonic code, including encoding, decoding, repetitive QEC, and high-fidelity (97.0% process fidelity on average) universal quantum gate set on the logical qubit. The protected logical qubit has shown 2.8 times longer lifetime than the uncorrected one. A Ramsey experiment on a protected logical qubit is demonstrated for the first time with two times longer coherence than the unprotected one. Our experiment represents an important step towards fault-tolerant quantum computation based on bosonic encoding., Comment: 20 pages 18 figures