Readout of a quantum processor with high dynamic range Josephson parametric amplifiers

T. C. White, Alex Opremcak, George Sterling, Alexander Korotkov, Daniel Sank, Rajeev Acharya, Markus Ansmann, Frank Arute, Kunal Arya, Joseph C. Bardin, Andreas Bengtsson, Alexandre Bourassa, Jenna Bovaird, Leon Brill, Bob B. Buckley, David A. Buell, Tim Burger, Brian Burkett, Nicholas Bushnell, Zijun Chen, Ben Chiaro, Josh Cogan, Roberto Collins, Alexander L. Crook, Ben Curtin, Sean Demura, Andrew Dunsworth, Catherine Erickson, Reza Fatemi, Leslie Flores-Burgos, Ebrahim Forati, Brooks Foxen, William Giang, Marissa Giustina, Alejandro Grajales Dau, Michael C. Hamilton, Sean D. Harrington, Jeremy Hilton, Markus Hoffmann, Sabrina Hong, Trent Huang, Ashley Huff, Justin Iveland, Evan Jeffrey, Márika Kieferová, Seon Kim, Paul V. Klimov, Fedor Kostritsa, John Mark Kreikebaum, David Landhuis, Pavel Laptev, Lily Laws, Kenny Lee, Brian J. Lester, Alexander Lill, Wayne Liu, Aditya Locharla, Erik Lucero, Trevor McCourt, Matt McEwen, Xiao Mi, Kevin C. Miao, Shirin Montazeri, Alexis Morvan, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Ani Nersisyan, Jiun How Ng, Anthony Nguyen, Murray Nguyen, Rebecca Potter, Chris Quintana, Pedram Roushan, Kannan Sankaragomathi, Kevin J. Satzinger, Christopher Schuster, Michael J. Shearn, Aaron Shorter, Vladimir Shvarts, Jindra Skruzny, W. Clarke Smith, Marco Szalay, Alfredo Torres, Bryan Woo, Z. Jamie Yao, Ping Yeh, Juhwan Yoo, Grayson Young, Ningfeng Zhu, Nicholas Zobrist, Yu Chen, Anthony Megrant, Julian Kelly, Ofer Naaman

We demonstrate a high dynamic range Josephson parametric amplifier (JPA) in which the active nonlinear element is implemented using an array of rf-SQUIDs. The device is matched to the 50 $Ω$ environment with a Klopfenstein-taper impedance transformer and achieves a bandwidth of 250-300 MHz, with input saturation powers up to -95 dBm at 20 dB gain. A 54-qubit Sycamore processor was used to benchmark these devices, providing a calibration for readout power, an estimate of amplifier added noise, and a platform for comparison against standard impedance matched parametric amplifiers with a single dc-SQUID. We find that the high power rf-SQUID array design has no adverse effect on system noise, readout fidelity, or qubit dephasing, and we estimate an upper bound on amplifier added noise at 1.6 times the quantum limit. Lastly, amplifiers with this design show no degradation in readout fidelity due to gain compression, which can occur in multi-tone multiplexed readout with traditional JPAs.

Bell violation with entangled photons, free of the coincidence-time loophole

Jan-Åke Larsson, Marissa Giustina, Johannes Kofler, Bernhard Wittmann, Rupert Ursin, Sven Ramelow

In a local realist world view, physical properties are defined prior to and independent of measurement, and no physical influence can propagate faster than the speed of light. Proper experimental violation of a Bell inequality would show that the world cannot be described within local realism. Such experiments usually require additional assumptions that make them vulnerable to a number of "loopholes." A recent experiment [Giustina et al, Nature, 2013] violated a Bell inequality without being vulnerable to the detection (or fair-sampling) loophole, therefore not needing the fair-sampling assumption. Here we analyze the more subtle coincidence-time loophole, and propose and prove the validity of two different methods of data analysis that avoid it. Both methods are general and can be used both for pulsed and continuous-wave experiments. We apply them to demonstrate that the experiment mentioned above violates local realism without being vulnerable to the coincidence-time loophole, therefore not needing the corresponding fair-coincidence assumption.

Learning Non-Markovian Quantum Noise from Moiré-Enhanced Swap Spectroscopy with Deep Evolutionary Algorithm

Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Vadim Smelyanskyi, Paul Klimov, Sergio Boixo, Rami Barends, Julian Kelly, Yu Chen, Kunal Arya, Brian Burkett, Dave Bacon, Zijun Chen, Ben Chiaro, Roberto Collins, Andrew Dunsworth, Brooks Foxen, Austin Fowler, Craig Gidney, Marissa Giustina, Rob Graff, Trent Huang, Evan Jeffrey, David Landhuis, Erik Lucero, Anthony Megrant, Josh Mutus, Xiao Mi, Ofer Naaman, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Chris Quintana, Pedram Roushan, John M. Martinis, Hartmut Neven

Two-level-system (TLS) defects in amorphous dielectrics are a major source of noise and decoherence in solid-state qubits. Gate-dependent non-Markovian errors caused by TLS-qubit coupling are detrimental to fault-tolerant quantum computation and have not been rigorously treated in the existing literature. In this work, we derive the non-Markovian dynamics between TLS and qubits during a SWAP-like two-qubit gate and the associated average gate fidelity for frequency-tunable Transmon qubits. This gate dependent error model facilitates using qubits as sensors to simultaneously learn practical imperfections in both the qubit's environment and control waveforms. We combine the-state-of-art machine learning algorithm with Moiré-enhanced swap spectroscopy to achieve robust learning using noisy experimental data. Deep neural networks are used to represent the functional map from experimental data to TLS parameters and are trained through an evolutionary algorithm. Our method achieves the highest learning efficiency and robustness against experimental imperfections to-date, representing an important step towards in-situ quantum control optimization over environmental and control defects.

Noise-resilient Edge Modes on a Chain of Superconducting Qubits

Xiao Mi, Michael Sonner, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Kenneth W. Lee, Brooks Foxen, Rajeev Acharya, Igor Aleiner, Trond I. Andersen, Frank Arute, Kunal Arya, Abraham Asfaw, Juan Atalaya, Ryan Babbush, Dave Bacon, Joseph C. Bardin, Joao Basso, Andreas Bengtsson, Gina Bortoli, Alexandre Bourassa, Leon Brill, Michael Broughton, Bob B. Buckley, David A. Buell, Brian Burkett, Nicholas Bushnell, Zijun Chen, Benjamin Chiaro, Roberto Collins, Paul Conner, William Courtney, Alexander L. Crook, Dripto M. Debroy, Sean Demura, Andrew Dunsworth, Daniel Eppens, Catherine Erickson, Lara Faoro, Edward Farhi, Reza Fatemi, Leslie Flores, Ebrahim Forati, Austin G. Fowler, William Giang, Craig Gidney, Dar Gilboa, Marissa Giustina, Alejandro Grajales Dau, Jonathan A. Gross, Steve Habegger, Matthew P. Harrigan, Jeremy Hilton, Markus Hoffmann, Sabrina Hong, Trent Huang, Ashley Huff, William J. Huggins, Lev B. Ioffe, Sergei V. Isakov, Justin Iveland, Evan Jeffrey, Zhang Jiang, Cody Jones, Dvir Kafri, Kostyantyn Kechedzhi, Tanuj Khattar, Seon Kim, Alexei Kitaev, Paul V. Klimov, Andrey R. Klots, Alexander N. Korotkov, Fedor Kostritsa, J. M. Kreikebaum, David Landhuis, Pavel Laptev, Kim-Ming Lau, Joonho Lee, Lily Laws, Wayne Liu, Aditya Locharla, Erik Lucero, Orion Martin, Jarrod R. McClean, Matt McEwen, Bernardo Meurer Costa, Kevin C. Miao, Masoud Mohseni, Shirin Montazeri, Alexis Morvan, Emily Mount, Wojciech Mruczkiewicz, Ofer Naaman, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Michael Newman, Thomas E. O'Brien, Alex Opremcak, Andre Petukhov, Rebecca Potter, Chris Quintana, Nicholas C. Rubin, Negar Saei, Daniel Sank, Kannan Sankaragomathi, Kevin J. Satzinger, Christopher Schuster, Michael J. Shearn, Vladimir Shvarts, Doug Strain, Yuan Su, Marco Szalay, Guifre Vidal, Benjamin Villalonga, Catherine Vollgraff-Heidweiller, Theodore White, Z. Jamie Yao, Ping Yeh, Juhwan Yoo, Adam Zalcman, Yaxing Zhang, Ningfeng Zhu, Hartmut Neven, Sergio Boixo, Anthony Megrant, Yu Chen, Julian Kelly, Vadim Smelyanskiy, Dmitry A. Abanin, Pedram Roushan

On 'Bell violation using entangled photons without the fair-sampling assumption'

Johannes Kofler, Sven Ramelow, Marissa Giustina, Anton Zeilinger

A recent experiment presented, for photons, the first violation of a Bell inequality closing the fair-sampling loophole, i.e., without having to assume that the sample of measured photons fairly represents the entire ensemble. In this note, we discuss a detailed quantum mechanical model for the experimental data. Within experimental error the experiment agrees with quantum mechanical prediction. We also discuss the effects of drifting laser intensity and show that it could not have mimicked a violation of the Bell inequality. Therefore, the experiment was immune to the "production-rate loophole."

Measurement-induced entanglement and teleportation on a noisy quantum processor

Jesse C. Hoke, Matteo Ippoliti, Eliott Rosenberg, Dmitry Abanin, Rajeev Acharya, Trond I. Andersen, Markus Ansmann, Frank Arute, Kunal Arya, Abraham Asfaw, Juan Atalaya, Joseph C. Bardin, Andreas Bengtsson, Gina Bortoli, Alexandre Bourassa, Jenna Bovaird, Leon Brill, Michael Broughton, Bob B. Buckley, David A. Buell, Tim Burger, Brian Burkett, Nicholas Bushnell, Zijun Chen, Ben Chiaro, Desmond Chik, Josh Cogan, Roberto Collins, Paul Conner, William Courtney, Alexander L. Crook, Ben Curtin, Alejandro Grajales Dau, Dripto M. Debroy, Alexander Del Toro Barba, Sean Demura, Augustin Di Paolo, Ilya K. Drozdov, Andrew Dunsworth, Daniel Eppens, Catherine Erickson, Edward Farhi, Reza Fatemi, Vinicius S. Ferreira, Leslie Flores Burgos, Ebrahim Forati, Austin G. Fowler, Brooks Foxen, William Giang, Craig Gidney, Dar Gilboa, Marissa Giustina, Raja Gosula, Jonathan A. Gross, Steve Habegger, Michael C. Hamilton, Monica Hansen, Matthew P. Harrigan, Sean D. Harrington, Paula Heu, Markus R. Hoffmann, Sabrina Hong, Trent Huang, Ashley Huff, William J. Huggins, Sergei V. Isakov, Justin Iveland, Evan Jeffrey, Cody Jones, Pavol Juhas, Dvir Kafri, Kostyantyn Kechedzhi, Tanuj Khattar, Mostafa Khezri, Mária Kieferová, Seon Kim, Alexei Kitaev, Paul V. Klimov, Andrey R. Klots, Alexander N. Korotkov, Fedor Kostritsa, John Mark Kreikebaum, David Landhuis, Pavel Laptev, Kim-Ming Lau, Lily Laws, Joonho Lee, Kenny W. Lee, Yuri D. Lensky, Brian J. Lester, Alexander T. Lill, Wayne Liu, Aditya Locharla, Orion Martin, Jarrod R. McClean, Matt McEwen, Kevin C. Miao, Amanda Mieszala, Shirin Montazeri, Alexis Morvan, Ramis Movassagh, Wojciech Mruczkiewicz, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Ani Nersisyan, Michael Newman, Jiun H. Ng, Anthony Nguyen, Murray Nguyen, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Tom E. O'Brien, Seun Omonije, Alex Opremcak, Andre Petukhov, Rebecca Potter, Leonid P. Pryadko, Chris Quintana, Charles Rocque, Nicholas C. Rubin, Negar Saei, Daniel Sank, Kannan Sankaragomathi, Kevin J. Satzinger, Henry F. Schurkus, Christopher Schuster, Michael J. Shearn, Aaron Shorter, Noah Shutty, Vlad Shvarts, Jindra Skruzny, W. Clarke Smith, Rolando D. Somma, George Sterling, Douglas Strain, Marco Szalay, Alfredo Torres, Guifre Vidal, Benjamin Villalonga, Catherine Vollgraff Heidweiller, Ted White, Bryan W. K. Woo, Cheng Xing, Z. Jamie. Yao, Ping Yeh, Juhwan Yoo, Grayson Young, Adam Zalcman, Yaxing Zhang, Ningfeng Zhu, Nicholas Zobrist, Harmut Neven, Ryan Babbush, Dave Bacon, Sergio Boixo, Jeremy Hilton, Erik Lucero, Anthony Megrant, Julian Kelly, Yu Chen, Vadim Smelyanskiy, Xiao Mi, Vedika Khemani, Pedram Roushan

Requirements for a loophole-free photonic Bell test using imperfect setting generators

Johannes Kofler, Marissa Giustina, Jan-Åke Larsson, Morgan W. Mitchell

Experimental violations of Bell inequalities are in general vulnerable to so-called "loopholes." In this work, we analyse the characteristics of a loophole-free Bell test with photons, closing simultaneously the locality, freedom-of-choice, fair-sampling (i.e. detection), coincidence-time, and memory loopholes. We pay special attention to the effect of excess predictability in the setting choices due to non-ideal random number generators. We discuss necessary adaptations of the CH/Eberhard inequality when using such imperfect devices and -- using Hoeffding's inequality and Doob's optional stopping theorem -- the statistical analysis in such Bell tests.

Observation of Time-Crystalline Eigenstate Order on a Quantum Processor

Xiao Mi, Matteo Ippoliti, Chris Quintana, Ami Greene, Zijun Chen, Jonathan Gross, Frank Arute, Kunal Arya, Juan Atalaya, Ryan Babbush, Joseph C. Bardin, Joao Basso, Andreas Bengtsson, Alexander Bilmes, Alexandre Bourassa, Leon Brill, Michael Broughton, Bob B. Buckley, David A. Buell, Brian Burkett, Nicholas Bushnell, Benjamin Chiaro, Roberto Collins, William Courtney, Dripto Debroy, Sean Demura, Alan R. Derk, Andrew Dunsworth, Daniel Eppens, Catherine Erickson, Edward Farhi, Austin G. Fowler, Brooks Foxen, Craig Gidney, Marissa Giustina, Matthew P. Harrigan, Sean D. Harrington, Jeremy Hilton, Alan Ho, Sabrina Hong, Trent Huang, Ashley Huff, William J. Huggins, L. B. Ioffe, Sergei V. Isakov, Justin Iveland, Evan Jeffrey, Zhang Jiang, Cody Jones, Dvir Kafri, Tanuj Khattar, Seon Kim, Alexei Kitaev, Paul V. Klimov, Alexander N. Korotkov, Fedor Kostritsa, David Landhuis, Pavel Laptev, Joonho Lee, Kenny Lee, Aditya Locharla, Erik Lucero, Orion Martin, Jarrod R. McClean, Trevor McCourt, Matt McEwen, Kevin C. Miao, Masoud Mohseni, Shirin Montazeri, Wojciech Mruczkiewicz, Ofer Naaman, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Michael Newman, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Thomas E. O\' Brien, Alex Opremcak, Eric Ostby, Balint Pato, Andre Petukhov, Nicholas C. Rubin, Daniel Sank, Kevin J. Satzinger, Vladimir Shvarts, Yuan Su, Doug Strain, Marco Szalay, Matthew D. Trevithick, Benjamin Villalonga, Theodore White, Z. Jamie Yao, Ping Yeh, Juhwan Yoo, Adam Zalcman, Hartmut Neven, Sergio Boixo, Vadim Smelyanskiy, Anthony Megrant, Julian Kelly, Yu Chen, S. L. Sondhi, Roderich Moessner, Kostyantyn Kechedzhi, Vedika Khemani, Pedram Roushan

Quantum many-body systems display rich phase structure in their low-temperature equilibrium states. However, much of nature is not in thermal equilibrium. Remarkably, it was recently predicted that out-of-equilibrium systems can exhibit novel dynamical phases that may otherwise be forbidden by equilibrium thermodynamics, a paradigmatic example being the discrete time crystal (DTC). Concretely, dynamical phases can be defined in periodically driven many-body localized systems via the concept of eigenstate order. In eigenstate-ordered phases, the entire many-body spectrum exhibits quantum correlations and long-range order, with characteristic signatures in late-time dynamics from all initial states. It is, however, challenging to experimentally distinguish such stable phases from transient phenomena, wherein few select states can mask typical behavior. Here we implement a continuous family of tunable CPHASE gates on an array of superconducting qubits to experimentally observe an eigenstate-ordered DTC. We demonstrate the characteristic spatiotemporal response of a DTC for generic initial states. Our work employs a time-reversal protocol that discriminates external decoherence from intrinsic thermalization, and leverages quantum typicality to circumvent the exponential cost of densely sampling the eigenspectrum. In addition, we locate the phase transition out of the DTC with an experimental finite-size analysis. These results establish a scalable approach to study non-equilibrium phases of matter on current quantum processors.

Information Scrambling in Computationally Complex Quantum Circuits

Xiao Mi, Pedram Roushan, Chris Quintana, Salvatore Mandra, Jeffrey Marshall, Charles Neill, Frank Arute, Kunal Arya, Juan Atalaya, Ryan Babbush, Joseph C. Bardin, Rami Barends, Andreas Bengtsson, Sergio Boixo, Alexandre Bourassa, Michael Broughton, Bob B. Buckley, David A. Buell, Brian Burkett, Nicholas Bushnell, Zijun Chen, Benjamin Chiaro, Roberto Collins, William Courtney, Sean Demura, Alan R. Derk, Andrew Dunsworth, Daniel Eppens, Catherine Erickson, Edward Farhi, Austin G. Fowler, Brooks Foxen, Craig Gidney, Marissa Giustina, Jonathan A. Gross, Matthew P. Harrigan, Sean D. Harrington, Jeremy Hilton, Alan Ho, Sabrina Hong, Trent Huang, William J. Huggins, L. B. Ioffe, Sergei V. Isakov, Evan Jeffrey, Zhang Jiang, Cody Jones, Dvir Kafri, Julian Kelly, Seon Kim, Alexei Kitaev, Paul V. Klimov, Alexander N. Korotkov, Fedor Kostritsa, David Landhuis, Pavel Laptev, Erik Lucero, Orion Martin, Jarrod R. McClean, Trevor McCourt, Matt McEwen, Anthony Megrant, Kevin C. Miao, Masoud Mohseni, Wojciech Mruczkiewicz, Josh Mutus, Ofer Naaman, Matthew Neeley, Michael Newman, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Thomas E. O'Brien, Alex Opremcak, Eric Ostby, Balint Pato, Andre Petukhov, Nicholas Redd, Nicholas C. Rubin, Daniel Sank, Kevin J. Satzinger, Vladimir Shvarts, Doug Strain, Marco Szalay, Matthew D. Trevithick, Benjamin Villalonga, Theodore White, Z. Jamie Yao, Ping Yeh, Adam Zalcman, Hartmut Neven, Igor Aleiner, Kostyantyn Kechedzhi, Vadim Smelyanskiy, Yu Chen

Interaction in quantum systems can spread initially localized quantum information into the many degrees of freedom of the entire system. Understanding this process, known as quantum scrambling, is the key to resolving various conundrums in physics. Here, by measuring the time-dependent evolution and fluctuation of out-of-time-order correlators, we experimentally investigate the dynamics of quantum scrambling on a 53-qubit quantum processor. We engineer quantum circuits that distinguish the two mechanisms associated with quantum scrambling, operator spreading and operator entanglement, and experimentally observe their respective signatures. We show that while operator spreading is captured by an efficient classical model, operator entanglement requires exponentially scaled computational resources to simulate. These results open the path to studying complex and practically relevant physical observables with near-term quantum processors.

Significant-loophole-free test of Bell's theorem with entangled photons

Marissa Giustina, Marijn A. M. Versteegh, Sören Wengerowsky, Johannes Handsteiner, Armin Hochrainer, Kevin Phelan, Fabian Steinlechner, Johannes Kofler, Jan-Åke Larsson, Carlos Abellán, Waldimar Amaya, Valerio Pruneri, Morgan W. Mitchell, Jörn Beyer, Thomas Gerrits, Adriana E. Lita, Lynden K. Shalm, Sae Woo Nam, Thomas Scheidl, Rupert Ursin, Bernhard Wittmann, Anton Zeilinger

Local realism is the worldview in which physical properties of objects exist independently of measurement and where physical influences cannot travel faster than the speed of light. Bell's theorem states that this worldview is incompatible with the predictions of quantum mechanics, as is expressed in Bell's inequalities. Previous experiments convincingly supported the quantum predictions. Yet, every experiment requires assumptions that provide loopholes for a local realist explanation. Here we report a Bell test that closes the most significant of these loopholes simultaneously. Using a well-optimized source of entangled photons, rapid setting generation, and highly efficient superconducting detectors, we observe a violation of a Bell inequality with high statistical significance. The purely statistical probability of our results to occur under local realism does not exceed $3.74 \times 10^{-31}$, corresponding to an 11.5 standard deviation effect.

Bell violation with entangled photons, free of the fair-sampling assumption

Marissa Giustina, Alexandra Mech, Sven Ramelow, Bernhard Wittmann, Johannes Kofler, Jörn Beyer, Adriana Lita, Brice Calkins, Thomas Gerrits, Sae Woo Nam, Rupert Ursin, Anton Zeilinger

The violation of a Bell inequality is an experimental observation that forces one to abandon a local realistic worldview, namely, one in which physical properties are (probabilistically) defined prior to and independent of measurement and no physical influence can propagate faster than the speed of light. All such experimental violations require additional assumptions depending on their specific construction making them vulnerable to so-called "loopholes." Here, we use photons and high-efficiency superconducting detectors to violate a Bell inequality closing the fair-sampling loophole, i.e. without assuming that the sample of measured photons accurately represents the entire ensemble. Additionally, we demonstrate that our setup can realize one-sided device-independent quantum key distribution on both sides. This represents a significant advance relevant to both fundamental tests and promising quantum applications.

Highly efficient heralding of entangled single photons

Sven Ramelow, Alexandra Mech, Marissa Giustina, Simon Groeblacher, Witlef Wieczorek, Adriana Lita, Brice Calkins, Thomas Gerrits, Sae Woo Nam, Anton Zeilinger, Rupert Ursin

Single photons are an important prerequisite for a broad spectrum of quantum optical applications. We experimentally demonstrate a heralded single-photon source based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion in collinear bulk optics, and fiber-coupled bolometric transition-edge sensors. Without correcting for background, losses, or detection inefficiencies, we measure an overall heralding efficiency of 83 %. By violating a Bell inequality, we confirm the single-photon character and high-quality entanglement of our heralded single photons which, in combination with the high heralding efficiency, are a necessary ingredient for advanced quantum communication protocols such as one-sided device-independent quantum key distribution.

Resolving catastrophic error bursts from cosmic rays in large arrays of superconducting qubits

Matt McEwen, Lara Faoro, Kunal Arya, Andrew Dunsworth, Trent Huang, Seon Kim, Brian Burkett, Austin Fowler, Frank Arute, Joseph C. Bardin, Andreas Bengtsson, Alexander Bilmes, Bob B. Buckley, Nicholas Bushnell, Zijun Chen, Roberto Collins, Sean Demura, Alan R. Derk, Catherine Erickson, Marissa Giustina, Sean D. Harrington, Sabrina Hong, Evan Jeffrey, Julian Kelly, Paul V. Klimov, Fedor Kostritsa, Pavel Laptev, Aditya Locharla, Xiao Mi, Kevin C. Miao, Shirin Montazeri, Josh Mutus, Ofer Naaman, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Alex Opremcak, Chris Quintana, Nicholas Redd, Pedram Roushan, Daniel Sank, Kevin J. Satzinger, Vladimir Shvarts, Theodore White, Z. Jamie Yao, Ping Yeh, Juhwan Yoo, Yu Chen, Vadim Smelyanskiy, John M. Martinis, Hartmut Neven, Anthony Megrant, Lev Ioffe, Rami Barends

Scalable quantum computing can become a reality with error correction, provided coherent qubits can be constructed in large arrays. The key premise is that physical errors can remain both small and sufficiently uncorrelated as devices scale, so that logical error rates can be exponentially suppressed. However, energetic impacts from cosmic rays and latent radioactivity violate both of these assumptions. An impinging particle ionizes the substrate, radiating high energy phonons that induce a burst of quasiparticles, destroying qubit coherence throughout the device. High-energy radiation has been identified as a source of error in pilot superconducting quantum devices, but lacking a measurement technique able to resolve a single event in detail, the effect on large scale algorithms and error correction in particular remains an open question. Elucidating the physics involved requires operating large numbers of qubits at the same rapid timescales as in error correction, exposing the event's evolution in time and spread in space. Here, we directly observe high-energy rays impacting a large-scale quantum processor. We introduce a rapid space and time-multiplexed measurement method and identify large bursts of quasiparticles that simultaneously and severely limit the energy coherence of all qubits, causing chip-wide failure. We track the events from their initial localised impact to high error rates across the chip. Our results provide direct insights into the scale and dynamics of these damaging error bursts in large-scale devices, and highlight the necessity of mitigation to enable quantum computing to scale.

Exponential suppression of bit or phase flip errors with repetitive error correction

Zijun Chen, Kevin J. Satzinger, Juan Atalaya, Alexander N. Korotkov, Andrew Dunsworth, Daniel Sank, Chris Quintana, Matt McEwen, Rami Barends, Paul V. Klimov, Sabrina Hong, Cody Jones, Andre Petukhov, Dvir Kafri, Sean Demura, Brian Burkett, Craig Gidney, Austin G. Fowler, Harald Putterman, Igor Aleiner, Frank Arute, Kunal Arya, Ryan Babbush, Joseph C. Bardin, Andreas Bengtsson, Alexandre Bourassa, Michael Broughton, Bob B. Buckley, David A. Buell, Nicholas Bushnell, Benjamin Chiaro, Roberto Collins, William Courtney, Alan R. Derk, Daniel Eppens, Catherine Erickson, Edward Farhi, Brooks Foxen, Marissa Giustina, Jonathan A. Gross, Matthew P. Harrigan, Sean D. Harrington, Jeremy Hilton, Alan Ho, Trent Huang, William J. Huggins, L. B. Ioffe, Sergei V. Isakov, Evan Jeffrey, Zhang Jiang, Kostyantyn Kechedzhi, Seon Kim, Fedor Kostritsa, David Landhuis, Pavel Laptev, Erik Lucero, Orion Martin, Jarrod R. McClean, Trevor McCourt, Xiao Mi, Kevin C. Miao, Masoud Mohseni, Wojciech Mruczkiewicz, Josh Mutus, Ofer Naaman, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Michael Newman, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Thomas E. O'Brien, Alex Opremcak, Eric Ostby, Bálint Pató, Nicholas Redd, Pedram Roushan, Nicholas C. Rubin, Vladimir Shvarts, Doug Strain, Marco Szalay, Matthew D. Trevithick, Benjamin Villalonga, Theodore White, Z. Jamie Yao, Ping Yeh, Adam Zalcman, Hartmut Neven, Sergio Boixo, Vadim Smelyanskiy, Yu Chen, Anthony Megrant, Julian Kelly

Realizing the potential of quantum computing will require achieving sufficiently low logical error rates. Many applications call for error rates in the $10^{-15}$ regime, but state-of-the-art quantum platforms typically have physical error rates near $10^{-3}$. Quantum error correction (QEC) promises to bridge this divide by distributing quantum logical information across many physical qubits so that errors can be detected and corrected. Logical errors are then exponentially suppressed as the number of physical qubits grows, provided that the physical error rates are below a certain threshold. QEC also requires that the errors are local and that performance is maintained over many rounds of error correction, two major outstanding experimental challenges. Here, we implement 1D repetition codes embedded in a 2D grid of superconducting qubits which demonstrate exponential suppression of bit or phase-flip errors, reducing logical error per round by more than $100\times$ when increasing the number of qubits from 5 to 21. Crucially, this error suppression is stable over 50 rounds of error correction. We also introduce a method for analyzing error correlations with high precision, and characterize the locality of errors in a device performing QEC for the first time. Finally, we perform error detection using a small 2D surface code logical qubit on the same device, and show that the results from both 1D and 2D codes agree with numerical simulations using a simple depolarizing error model. These findings demonstrate that superconducting qubits are on a viable path towards fault tolerant quantum computing.

A 28nm Bulk-CMOS 4-to-8GHz <2mW Cryogenic Pulse Modulator for Scalable Quantum Computing

Joseph C Bardin, Evan Jeffrey, Erik Lucero, Trent Huang, Ofer Naaman, Rami Barends, Ted White, Marissa Giustina, Daniel Sank, Pedram Roushan, Kunal Arya, Benjamin Chiaro, Julian Kelly, Jimmy Chen, Brian Burkett, Yu Chen, Andrew Dunsworth, Austin Fowler, Brooks Foxen, Craig Gidney, Rob Graff, Paul Klimov, Josh Mutus, Matthew McEwen, Anthony Megrant, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Chris Quintana, Amit Vainsencher, Hartmut Neven, John Martinis

Future quantum computing systems will require cryogenic integrated circuits to control and measure millions of qubits. In this paper, we report the design and characterization of a prototype cryogenic CMOS integrated circuit that has been optimized for the control of transmon qubits. The circuit has been integrated into a quantum measurement setup and its performance has been validated through multiple quantum control experiments.

Supplementary information for "Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor"

Frank Arute, Kunal Arya, Ryan Babbush, Dave Bacon, Joseph C. Bardin, Rami Barends, Rupak Biswas, Sergio Boixo, Fernando G. S. L. Brandao, David A. Buell, Brian Burkett, Yu Chen, Zijun Chen, Ben Chiaro, Roberto Collins, William Courtney, Andrew Dunsworth, Edward Farhi, Brooks Foxen, Austin Fowler, Craig Gidney, Marissa Giustina, Rob Graff, Keith Guerin, Steve Habegger, Matthew P. Harrigan, Michael J. Hartmann, Alan Ho, Markus R. Hoffmann, Trent Huang, Travis S. Humble, Sergei V. Isakov, Evan Jeffrey, Zhang Jiang, Dvir Kafri, Kostyantyn Kechedzhi, Julian Kelly, Paul V. Klimov, Sergey Knysh, Alexander N. Korotkov, Fedor Kostritsa, David Landhuis, Mike Lindmark, Erik Lucero, Dmitry Lyakh, Salvatore Mandra, Jarrod R. McClean, Matt McEwen, Anthony Megrant, Xiao Mi, Kristel Michielsen, Masoud Mohseni, Josh Mutus, Ofer Naaman, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Eric Ostby, Andre Petukhov, John C. Platt, Chris Quintana, Eleanor G. Rieffel, Pedram Roushan, Nicholas C. Rubin, Daniel Sank, Kevin J. Satzinger, Vadim Smelyanskiy, Kevin J. Sung, Matthew D. Trevithick, Amit Vainsencher, Benjamin Villalonga, Theodore White, Z. Jamie Yao, Ping Yeh, Adam Zalcman, Hartmut Neven, John M. Martinis

This is an updated version of supplementary information to accompany "Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor", an article published in the October 24, 2019 issue of Nature. The main article is freely available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1666-5. Summary of changes since arXiv:1910.11333v1 (submitted 23 Oct 2019): added URL for qFlex source code; added Erratum section; added Figure S41 comparing statistical and total uncertainty for log and linear XEB; new References [1,65]; miscellaneous updates for clarity and style consistency; miscellaneous typographical and formatting corrections.

Overcoming leakage in scalable quantum error correction

Kevin C. Miao, Matt McEwen, Juan Atalaya, Dvir Kafri, Leonid P. Pryadko, Andreas Bengtsson, Alex Opremcak, Kevin J. Satzinger, Zijun Chen, Paul V. Klimov, Chris Quintana, Rajeev Acharya, Kyle Anderson, Markus Ansmann, Frank Arute, Kunal Arya, Abraham Asfaw, Joseph C. Bardin, Alexandre Bourassa, Jenna Bovaird, Leon Brill, Bob B. Buckley, David A. Buell, Tim Burger, Brian Burkett, Nicholas Bushnell, Juan Campero, Ben Chiaro, Roberto Collins, Paul Conner, Alexander L. Crook, Ben Curtin, Dripto M. Debroy, Sean Demura, Andrew Dunsworth, Catherine Erickson, Reza Fatemi, Vinicius S. Ferreira, Leslie Flores Burgos, Ebrahim Forati, Austin G. Fowler, Brooks Foxen, Gonzalo Garcia, William Giang, Craig Gidney, Marissa Giustina, Raja Gosula, Alejandro Grajales Dau, Jonathan A. Gross, Michael C. Hamilton, Sean D. Harrington, Paula Heu, Jeremy Hilton, Markus R. Hoffmann, Sabrina Hong, Trent Huang, Ashley Huff, Justin Iveland, Evan Jeffrey, Zhang Jiang, Cody Jones, Julian Kelly, Seon Kim, Fedor Kostritsa, John Mark Kreikebaum, David Landhuis, Pavel Laptev, Lily Laws, Kenny Lee, Brian J. Lester, Alexander T. Lill, Wayne Liu, Aditya Locharla, Erik Lucero, Steven Martin, Anthony Megrant, Xiao Mi, Shirin Montazeri, Alexis Morvan, Ofer Naaman, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Ani Nersisyan, Michael Newman, Jiun How Ng, Anthony Nguyen, Murray Nguyen, Rebecca Potter, Charles Rocque, Pedram Roushan, Kannan Sankaragomathi, Christopher Schuster, Michael J. Shearn, Aaron Shorter, Noah Shutty, Vladimir Shvarts, Jindra Skruzny, W. Clarke Smith, George Sterling, Marco Szalay, Douglas Thor, Alfredo Torres, Theodore White, Bryan W. K. Woo, Z. Jamie Yao, Ping Yeh, Juhwan Yoo, Grayson Young, Adam Zalcman, Ningfeng Zhu, Nicholas Zobrist, Hartmut Neven, Vadim Smelyanskiy, Andre Petukhov, Alexander N. Korotkov, Daniel Sank, Yu Chen

Leakage of quantum information out of computational states into higher energy states represents a major challenge in the pursuit of quantum error correction (QEC). In a QEC circuit, leakage builds over time and spreads through multi-qubit interactions. This leads to correlated errors that degrade the exponential suppression of logical error with scale, challenging the feasibility of QEC as a path towards fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here, we demonstrate the execution of a distance-3 surface code and distance-21 bit-flip code on a Sycamore quantum processor where leakage is removed from all qubits in each cycle. This shortens the lifetime of leakage and curtails its ability to spread and induce correlated errors. We report a ten-fold reduction in steady-state leakage population on the data qubits encoding the logical state and an average leakage population of less than $1 \times 10^{-3}$ throughout the entire device. The leakage removal process itself efficiently returns leakage population back to the computational basis, and adding it to a code circuit prevents leakage from inducing correlated error across cycles, restoring a fundamental assumption of QEC. With this demonstration that leakage can be contained, we resolve a key challenge for practical QEC at scale.

Learning to Learn Faster from Human Feedback with Language Model Predictive Control

Jacky Liang, Fei Xia, Wenhao Yu, Andy Zeng, Montserrat Gonzalez Arenas, Maria Attarian, Maria Bauza, Matthew Bennice, Alex Bewley, Adil Dostmohamed, Chuyuan Kelly Fu, Nimrod Gileadi, Marissa Giustina, Keerthana Gopalakrishnan, Leonard Hasenclever, Jan Humplik, Jasmine Hsu, Nikhil Joshi, Ben Jyenis, Chase Kew, Sean Kirmani, Tsang-Wei Edward Lee, Kuang-Huei Lee, Assaf Hurwitz Michaely, Joss Moore, Ken Oslund, Dushyant Rao, Allen Ren, Baruch Tabanpour, Quan Vuong, Ayzaan Wahid, Ted Xiao, Ying Xu, Vincent Zhuang, Peng Xu, Erik Frey, Ken Caluwaerts, Tingnan Zhang, Brian Ichter, Jonathan Tompson, Leila Takayama, Vincent Vanhoucke, Izhak Shafran, Maja Mataric, Dorsa Sadigh, Nicolas Heess, Kanishka Rao, Nik Stewart, Jie Tan, Carolina Parada

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to exhibit a wide range of capabilities, such as writing robot code from language commands -- enabling non-experts to direct robot behaviors, modify them based on feedback, or compose them to perform new tasks. However, these capabilities (driven by in-context learning) are limited to short-term interactions, where users' feedback remains relevant for only as long as it fits within the context size of the LLM, and can be forgotten over longer interactions. In this work, we investigate fine-tuning the robot code-writing LLMs, to remember their in-context interactions and improve their teachability i.e., how efficiently they adapt to human inputs (measured by average number of corrections before the user considers the task successful). Our key observation is that when human-robot interactions are viewed as a partially observable Markov decision process (in which human language inputs are observations, and robot code outputs are actions), then training an LLM to complete previous interactions is training a transition dynamics model -- that can be combined with classic robotics techniques such as model predictive control (MPC) to discover shorter paths to success. This gives rise to Language Model Predictive Control (LMPC), a framework that fine-tunes PaLM 2 to improve its teachability on 78 tasks across 5 robot embodiments -- improving non-expert teaching success rates of unseen tasks by 26.9% while reducing the average number of human corrections from 2.4 to 1.9. Experiments show that LMPC also produces strong meta-learners, improving the success rate of in-context learning new tasks on unseen robot embodiments and APIs by 31.5%. See videos, code, and demos at: https://robot-teaching.github.io/.

Suppressing quantum errors by scaling a surface code logical qubit

Rajeev Acharya, Igor Aleiner, Richard Allen, Trond I. Andersen, Markus Ansmann, Frank Arute, Kunal Arya, Abraham Asfaw, Juan Atalaya, Ryan Babbush, Dave Bacon, Joseph C. Bardin, Joao Basso, Andreas Bengtsson, Sergio Boixo, Gina Bortoli, Alexandre Bourassa, Jenna Bovaird, Leon Brill, Michael Broughton, Bob B. Buckley, David A. Buell, Tim Burger, Brian Burkett, Nicholas Bushnell, Yu Chen, Zijun Chen, Ben Chiaro, Josh Cogan, Roberto Collins, Paul Conner, William Courtney, Alexander L. Crook, Ben Curtin, Dripto M. Debroy, Alexander Del Toro Barba, Sean Demura, Andrew Dunsworth, Daniel Eppens, Catherine Erickson, Lara Faoro, Edward Farhi, Reza Fatemi, Leslie Flores Burgos, Ebrahim Forati, Austin G. Fowler, Brooks Foxen, William Giang, Craig Gidney, Dar Gilboa, Marissa Giustina, Alejandro Grajales Dau, Jonathan A. Gross, Steve Habegger, Michael C. Hamilton, Matthew P. Harrigan, Sean D. Harrington, Oscar Higgott, Jeremy Hilton, Markus Hoffmann, Sabrina Hong, Trent Huang, Ashley Huff, William J. Huggins, Lev B. Ioffe, Sergei V. Isakov, Justin Iveland, Evan Jeffrey, Zhang Jiang, Cody Jones, Pavol Juhas, Dvir Kafri, Kostyantyn Kechedzhi, Julian Kelly, Tanuj Khattar, Mostafa Khezri, Mária Kieferová, Seon Kim, Alexei Kitaev, Paul V. Klimov, Andrey R. Klots, Alexander N. Korotkov, Fedor Kostritsa, John Mark Kreikebaum, David Landhuis, Pavel Laptev, Kim-Ming Lau, Lily Laws, Joonho Lee, Kenny Lee, Brian J. Lester, Alexander Lill, Wayne Liu, Aditya Locharla, Erik Lucero, Fionn D. Malone, Jeffrey Marshall, Orion Martin, Jarrod R. McClean, Trevor Mccourt, Matt McEwen, Anthony Megrant, Bernardo Meurer Costa, Xiao Mi, Kevin C. Miao, Masoud Mohseni, Shirin Montazeri, Alexis Morvan, Emily Mount, Wojciech Mruczkiewicz, Ofer Naaman, Matthew Neeley, Charles Neill, Ani Nersisyan, Hartmut Neven, Michael Newman, Jiun How Ng, Anthony Nguyen, Murray Nguyen, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Thomas E. O'Brien, Alex Opremcak, John Platt, Andre Petukhov, Rebecca Potter, Leonid P. Pryadko, Chris Quintana, Pedram Roushan, Nicholas C. Rubin, Negar Saei, Daniel Sank, Kannan Sankaragomathi, Kevin J. Satzinger, Henry F. Schurkus, Christopher Schuster, Michael J. Shearn, Aaron Shorter, Vladimir Shvarts, Jindra Skruzny, Vadim Smelyanskiy, W. Clarke Smith, George Sterling, Doug Strain, Marco Szalay, Alfredo Torres, Guifre Vidal, Benjamin Villalonga, Catherine Vollgraff Heidweiller, Theodore White, Cheng Xing, Z. Jamie Yao, Ping Yeh, Juhwan Yoo, Grayson Young, Adam Zalcman, Yaxing Zhang, Ningfeng Zhu

Formation of robust bound states of interacting microwave photons

Alexis Morvan, Trond I. Andersen, Xiao Mi, Charles Neill, Andre Petukhov, Kostyantyn Kechedzhi, Dmitry Abanin, Rajeev Acharya, Frank Arute, Kunal Arya, Abraham Asfaw, Juan Atalaya, Ryan Babbush, Dave Bacon, Joseph C. Bardin, Joao Basso, Andreas Bengtsson, Gina Bortoli, Alexandre Bourassa, Jenna Bovaird, Leon Brill, Michael Broughton, Bob B. Buckley, David A. Buell, Tim Burger, Brian Burkett, Nicholas Bushnell, Zijun Chen, Ben Chiaro, Roberto Collins, Paul Conner, William Courtney, Alexander L. Crook, Ben Curtin, Dripto M. Debroy, Alexander Del Toro Barba, Sean Demura, Andrew Dunsworth, Daniel Eppens, Catherine Erickson, Lara Faoro, Edward Farhi, Reza Fatemi, Leslie Flores Burgos, Ebrahim Forati, Austin G. Fowler, Brooks Foxen, William Giang, Craig Gidney, Dar Gilboa, Marissa Giustina, Alejandro Grajales Dau, Jonathan A. Gross, Steve Habegger, Michael C. Hamilton, Matthew P. Harrigan, Sean D. Harrington, Jeremy Hilton, Markus Hoffmann, Sabrina Hong, Trent Huang, Ashley Huff, William J. Huggins, Sergei V. Isakov, Justin Iveland, Evan Jeffrey, Zhang Jiang, Cody Jones, Pavol Juhas, Dvir Kafri, Tanuj Khattar, Mostafa Khezri, Marika Kieferova, Seon Kim, Alexei Kitaev, Paul V. Klimov, Andrey R. Klots, Alexander N. Korotkov, Fedor Kostritsa, John Mark Kreikebaum, David Landhuis, Pavel Laptev, Kim-Ming Lau, Lily Laws, Joonho Lee, Kenny Lee, Brian J. Lester, Alexander Lill, Wayne Liu, Aditya Locharla, Erik Lucero, Fionn D. Malone, Orion Martin, Jarrod R. McClean, Matt McEwen, Bernardo Meurer Costa, Kevin C. Miao, Masoud Mohseni, Shirin Montazeri, Emily Mount, Wojciech Mruczkiewicz, Ofer Naaman, Matthew Neeley, Ani Nersisyan, Michael Newman, Anthony Nguyen, Murray Nguyen, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Thomas E. O'Brien, Ricardo Olenewa, Alex Opremcak, Rebecca Potter, Chris Quintana, Nicholas C. Rubin, Negar Saei, Daniel Sank, Kannan Sankaragomathi, Kevin J. Satzinger, Henry F. Schurkus, Christopher Schuster, Michael J. Shearn, Aaron Shorter, Vladimir Shvarts, Jindra Skruzny, W. Clarke Smith, George Sterling, Doug Strain, Yuan Su, Marco Szalay, Alfredo Torres, Guifre Vidal, Benjamin Villalonga, Catherine Vollgraff Heidweiller, Theodore White, Cheng Xing, Z. Jamie Yao, Ping Yeh, Juhwan Yoo, Adam Zalcman, Yaxing Zhang, Ningfeng Zhu, Hartmut Neven, Sergio Boixo, Anthony Megrant, Julian Kelly, Yu Chen, Vadim Smelyanskiy, Igor Aleiner, Lev B. Ioffe, Pedram Roushan