Designing the Electronic Interface for Qubit Control

Abstract

Quantum computers have gained widespread interest as they can potentially solve problems that are intractable even for today’s supercomputers, such as the simulation of quantum systems as initially proposed by Feynman. To achieve such tremendous progress, a quantum computer relies on processing the information stored in quantum bits (qubits), the fundamental units of quantum computation, similar to the bits in a classical (i.e., non-quantum) processor. In general, a quantum processor comprising several qubits is connected through a quantum-to-classical interface consisting of classical electrical circuits for manipulating and reading out their quantum state. The accuracy of an operation on a qubit is characterized using the fidelity, which is 100 % in case of a perfect operation. In practice, a fidelity between 99 % and 99.9 % is typically achieved in today’s experiments with less than 100 qubits, limited by non-idealities in the control signals and by the implementation of the physical qubit itself. Since such qubit fidelities are too low to execute relevant quantum algorithms, quantum error correction schemes have been developed which rely on a much larger number of qubits to correct for possible errors, resulting in the need for quantum processors with thousands or millions of qubits. Solid-state qubits promise the largescale integration required to scale to millions of qubits, as they exploit the lithographic fabrication techniques borrowed from the semiconductor industry. However, state-of-theart solid-state qubits, such as transmons and single-electron spin qubits, must be typically cooled to cryogenic temperatures in a dilution refrigerator to exhibit quantum behavior. Because of the limited number of qubits (< 100) in state-of-theart solid-state quantum processors, the classical controller is currently implemented by general-purpose instruments or by tailor-made controllers operating at room temperature connected via several wires to the qubits in the cryogenic chamber. However, these systems must scale to support millions of qubits. While scaling up the underlying quantum processor is already exceptionally challenging, building the electronics required to interface such a large-scale processor is just as relevant and arduous.