Good vibrations: LHQS physicists investigate phononic open quantum acoustic systems

Left: Schematic of the hybrid quantum acoustic system used in this work. Right: Image of the hybrid flip-chip device located in a three dimensional microwave cavity used for coherent control and readout of the hybrid device.

Interactions between a quantum system and its environment typically lead to unwanted decoherence and dissipation. However, if the environmental degrees of freedom can be sufficiently well understood, or even engineered, dissipation can be harnessed for the preparation and manipulation of such open quantum systems. This type of quantum bath engineering has recently been leveraged in a broad class of systems including neutral atoms and trapped ions, optomechanical devices and superconducting qubits. Quantum acoustic systems, in which superconducting qubits are coupled to quantized mechanical degrees of freedom, offer a unique paradigm for open quantum systems research and quantum information processing.

New research from the LHQS published in Nature Communications, investigates a novel open quantum system composed of a superconducting transmon qubit coupled to a piezoelectric surface acoustic wave resonator. In this hybrid quantum system we are able to engineer dissipation in the form of tailor-made phononic loss to control quantum information states of the qubit.

You can also read a MSUToday write up about this work here: https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2023/good-vibrations-quantum-computing