Quantum annealing with manufactured spins.

Many interesting but practically intractable problems can be reduced to that of finding the ground state of a system of interacting spins; however, finding such a ground state remains computationally difficult. It is believed that the ground state of some naturally occurring spin systems can be effectively attained through a process called quantum annealing. If it could be harnessed, quantum annealing might improve on known methods for solving certain types of problem. However, physical investigation of quantum annealing has been largely confined to microscopic spins in condensed-matter systems. Here we use quantum annealing to find the ground state of an artificial Ising spin system comprising an array of eight superconducting flux quantum bits with programmable spin-spin couplings. We observe a clear signature of quantum annealing, distinguishable from classical thermal annealing through the temperature dependence of the time at which the system dynamics freezes. Our implementation can be configured in situ to realize a wide variety of different spin networks, each of which can be monitored as it moves towards a low-energy configuration. This programmable artificial spin network bridges the gap between the theoretical study of ideal isolated spin networks and the experimental investigation of bulk magnetic samples. Moreover, with an increased number of spins, such a system may provide a practical physical means to implement a quantum algorithm, possibly allowing more-effective approaches to solving certain classes of hard combinatorial optimization problems.

Does adiabatic quantum optimization fail for NP-complete problems?

It has been recently argued that adiabatic quantum optimization would fail in solving NP-complete problems because of the occurrence of exponentially small gaps due to crossing of local minima of the final Hamiltonian with its global minimum near the end of the adiabatic evolution. Using perturbation expansion, we analytically show that for the NP-hard problem known as maximum independent set, there always exist adiabatic paths along which no such crossings occur. Therefore, in order to prove that adiabatic quantum optimization fails for any NP-complete problem, one must prove that it is impossible to find any such path in polynomial time.

Consistency of the adiabatic theorem.

The adiabatic theorem provides the basis for the adiabatic model of quantum computation. Recently the conditions required for the adiabatic theorem to hold have become a subject of some controversy. Here we show that the reported violations of the adiabatic theorem all arise from resonant transitions between energy levels. In the absence of fast driven oscillations the traditional adiabatic theorem holds. Implications for adiabatic quantum computation are discussed.

Probing noise in flux qubits via macroscopic resonant tunneling.

Macroscopic resonant tunneling between the two lowest lying states of a bistable rf SQUID is used to characterize noise in a flux qubit. Measurements of the incoherent decay rate as a function of flux bias revealed a Gaussian-shaped profile that is not peaked at the resonance point but is shifted to a bias at which the initial well is higher than the target well. The rms amplitude of the noise, which is proportional to the dephasing rate 1/tauphi, was observed to be weakly dependent on temperature below 70 mK. Analysis of these results indicates that the dominant source of low energy flux noise in this device is a quantum mechanical environment in thermal equilibrium.

Effect of local minima on adiabatic quantum optimization.

We present a perturbative method to estimate the spectral gap for adiabatic quantum optimization, based on the structure of the energy levels in the problem Hamiltonian. We show that, for problems that have an exponentially large number of local minima close to the global minimum, the gap becomes exponentially small making the computation time exponentially long. The quantum advantage of adiabatic quantum computation may then be accessed only via the local adiabatic evolution, which requires phase coherence throughout the evolution and knowledge of the spectrum. Such problems, therefore, are not suitable for adiabatic quantum computation.

Macroscopic resonant tunneling in the presence of low frequency noise.

We develop a theory of macroscopic resonant tunneling of flux in a double-well potential in the presence of realistic flux noise with a significant low-frequency component. The rate of incoherent flux tunneling between the wells exhibits resonant peaks, the shape and position of which reflect qualitative features of the noise, and can thus serve as a diagnostic tool for studying the low-frequency flux noise in SQUID qubits. We show, in particular, that the noise-induced renormalization of the first resonant peak provides direct information on the temperature of the noise source and the strength of its quantum component.

Thermally assisted adiabatic quantum computation.

We study the effect of a thermal environment on adiabatic quantum computation using the Bloch-Redfield formalism. We show that in certain cases the environment can enhance the performance in two different ways: (i) by introducing a time scale for thermal mixing near the anticrossing that is smaller than the adiabatic time scale, and (ii) by relaxation after the anticrossing. The former can enhance the scaling of computation when the environment is super-Ohmic, while the latter can only provide a prefactor enhancement. We apply our method to the case of adiabatic Grover search and show that performance better than classical is possible with a super-Ohmic environment, with no a priori knowledge of the energy spectrum.

Four-qubit device with mixed couplings.

We present the first experimental results on a device with more than two superconducting qubits. The circuit consists of four three-junction flux qubits, with simultaneous ferro- and antiferromagnetic coupling implemented using shared Josephson junctions. Its response, which is dominated by the ground state, is characterized using low-frequency impedance measurement with a superconducting tank circuit coupled to the qubits. The results are found to be in excellent agreement with the quantum-mechanical predictions.

Evidence for entangled states of two coupled flux qubits.

We have studied the low-frequency magnetic susceptibility of two inductively coupled flux qubits using the impedance measurement technique (IMT), through their influence on the resonant properties of a weakly coupled high-quality tank circuit. In a single qubit, an IMT dip in the tank's current-voltage phase angle at the level anticrossing yields the amplitude of coherent flux tunneling. For two qubits, the difference (IMT deficit) between the sum of single-qubit dips and the dip amplitude when both qubits are at degeneracy shows that the system is in a mixture of entangled states (a necessary condition for entanglement). The dependence on temperature and relative bias between the qubits allows one to determine all the parameters of the effective Hamiltonian and equilibrium density matrix, and confirms the formation of entangled eigenstates.

Quasiparticle decoherence in d-wave superconducting qubits.

It is usually argued that the presence of gapless quasiparticle excitations at the nodes of the d-wave superconducting gap should strongly decohere the quantum states of a d-wave qubit, making quantum effects practically unobservable. Using a self-consistent linear response nonequilibrium quasiclassical formalism, we show that this is not necessarily true. We find quasiparticle conductance of a d-wave grain boundary junction to be strongly phase dependent. Midgap states as well as nodal quasiparticles contribute to the conductance and therefore decoherence. Quantum behavior is estimated to be detectable in a qubit containing a d-wave junction with appropriate parameters.

Continuous monitoring of Rabi oscillations in a Josephson flux qubit.

Under resonant irradiation, a quantum system can undergo coherent (Rabi) oscillations in time. We report evidence for such oscillations in a continuously observed three-Josephson-junction flux qubit, coupled to a high-quality tank circuit tuned to the Rabi frequency. In addition to simplicity, this method of Rabi spectroscopy enabled a long coherence time of about 2.5 micros, corresponding to an effective qubit quality factor approximately 7000.

Dynamical effects of an unconventional current-phase relation in YBCO dc SQUIDs.

The predominant d-wave pairing symmetry in high-temperature superconductors allows for a variety of current-phase relations in Josephson junctions, which is to a certain degree fabrication controlled. In this Letter, we report on direct experimental observations of the effects of a nonsinusoidal current-phase dependence in YBCO dc SQUIDs, which agree with the theoretical description of the system.