AVS 65th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Materials and Processes for Quantum Computing Focus Topic Monday Sessions
       Session MP+AM+EM+NS-MoA

Invited Paper MP+AM+EM+NS-MoA8
Near Term Development of Short Depth Quantum Processors

Monday, October 22, 2018, 3:40 pm, Room 203A

Session: Systems and Devices for Quantum Computing II
Presenter: Martin Sandberg, IBM, T.J. Watson Research Center
Authors: J.M. Chow, IBM Research Division, T.J. Watson Research Center
M.O. Sandberg, IBM, T.J. Watson Research Center
Correspondent: Click to Email
Quantum processors are currently in their infancy though the community is poised to explore bringing them to a state where they can outperform classical computations in relevant application. The challenges that lie ahead are plentiful and touch all aspects of the quantum computer, ranging from finding algorithms to building control software and control hardware as well as engineering and fabricating and testing the quantum hardware. In an effort to accelerate the development of quantum computing IBM launched the IBM Q experience. The Q Experience is a cloud-based platform which allows anyone to get familiar with quantum computing. It allows users to run experiments on actual quantum hardware.

In this talk I will focus on the development and characterization of short depth superconducting quantum hardware. Crosstalk and decoherence are some of the most pressing issues that we face today. Decoherence limits the number of operations that can be performed on the hardware (the depth of the circuit) whereas crosstalk can limit what operations can be performed in parallel on the circuit. The processors featured on the IBM Q experience are based on fixed frequency transmon qubits with a cross-resonance based two qubit gate. For this platform only a very narrow frequency range for the qubits is possible. This leads to problems related to frequency crowding and spurious interactions. Methods for characterizing and addressing both the frequency allocation and characterizing crosstalk will be discussed.