Robust Optimal Control of the Cross-Resonance Gate in Superconducting Qubits

Abstract

Superconducting circuits are one of the leading architectures in quantum computing. To undertake quantum computing one must be able to perform quantum gates; however, two-qubit gates are still limited in fidelity and gate time. The cross-resonance gate is a two-qubit gate that uses direct microwave drives and has seen much success in its implementation; but, there are theoretical indications that it has not yet reached the coherence limited fidelity value and its gate time is still relatively long compared with other quantum gate methods. Quantum optimal control theory is a powerful tool in the design of controls for quantum operations and has shown the capability to improve gate fidelities and reduce gate times. Robust quantum optimal control methodologies have further built on this to develop high fidelity quantum gates that are robust to uncertainties and noise in the system. In this thesis we use robust quantum optimal control theory to achieve these goals for the cross-resonance gate in a variety of superconducting qubit architectures. First, we investigate two superconducting qubits embedded in a common 3D microwave cavity in which the control drive is implemented via the common cavity mode of the cavity. We determine pulse shapes that implement the cross-resonance gate that are robust to uncertainty in the qubit transition frequencies for both a strictly two-level superconducting qubit and a three-level qubit. Second, we look at the cross-resonance gate with direct drives on each qubit, finding the minimal time to perform the cross-resonance gate with pulses that are robust to uncertainty in a measured system parameter for three cases: two three-level qubits with no drive crosstalk, two three-level qubits with some drive crosstalk, and two two-level qubits. Lastly, we report on simulations undertaken towards implementing a robust, high fidelity cross-resonance gate in a novel superconducting quantum device known as the coaxmon.