Entanglement and Bell states in superconducting flux qubits

Abstract

We theoretically study macroscopic quantum entanglement in two superconducting flux qubits. To manipulate the state of two flux qubits, a Josephson junction is introduced in the connecting loop coupling the qubits. Increasing the coupling energy of the Josephson junction makes it possible to achieve relatively strong coupling between the qubits, causing two-qubit tunneling processes to be even dominant over the single-qubit tunneling processes in the states of two qubits. It is shown that due to the two-qubit tunneling processes, both the ground state and excited states of the coupled flux qubits can be a Bell type of maximally entangled state, in experimentally accessible regimes. The parameter regimes for the Bell states are discussed in terms of magnetic flux and Josephson coupling energies.