Methods and circuits for performing two-qubit quantum gates
There is described a method for performing a two-qubit gate. The method comprises coupling a first qubit to a second qubit, and coupling a third qubit to the first qubit and to the second qubit, wherein the third qubit is a coupler. A drive signal is applied to the coupler to perform the two-qubit gate on the first qubit and the second qubit by driving the coupler, the drive signal creating coupling between eigenstates of a Hamiltonian of the coupler.
1. A method for performing a two-qubit gate, the method comprising:
coupling a first qubit to a second qubit;
coupling a third qubit to the first qubit and to the second qubit, wherein the third qubit is a coupler; and
applying a drive signal to the coupler to perform the two-qubit gate on the first qubit and the second qubit by driving the coupler, the drive signal creating coupling between eigenstates of a Hamiltonian of the coupler.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first qubit, the second qubit, and the third qubit are superconducting qubits.
3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the superconducting qubits are transmon qubits.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the drive signal is resonant with the coupler and produces a non-zero population in a first excited state of the coupler.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the drive signal is off-resonance from the coupler and produces a frequency shift of the coupler.
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein coupling the first qubit to the second qubit comprises coupling capacitively, and wherein coupling the third qubit to the first qubit and to the second qubit comprises coupling capacitively.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the drive signal is applied through a transmission line shared between the coupler and the first qubit or the second qubit.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the drive signal is applied through a transmission line capacitively coupled to the coupler.
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the two-qubit gate is an iSWAP gate.
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the two-qubit gate is a CZ gate.
11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the two-qubit gate is a fermionic simulation gate.
12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first qubit and the second qubit are operated at a same frequency.
13. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first qubit and the second qubit are operated at different frequencies.
14. The method of claim 1 , wherein applying the drive signal to the coupler comprises applying a 2π pulse to the coupler.
15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first qubit and the second qubit are tunable-frequency qubits and the third qubit is a fixed-frequency qubit.
16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first, second and third qubits are tunable-frequency qubits.
17. The method of claim 1 , wherein applying the drive signal to the coupler comprises applying a fixed-frequency signal with a modulated amplitude.
18. The method of claim 1 , wherein applying the drive signal to the coupler comprises applying the drive signal at a transition frequency to populate higher energy states of the coupler.
19. The method of claim 1 , wherein applying the drive signal to the coupler comprises using multi-photon absorption to populate higher energy states of the coupler.
20. The method of claim 1 , wherein applying the drive signal to the coupler comprises applying multiple signals at different frequencies to transfer a population successively from one excited state to another excited state of the coupler.