SuperLab

Special Topic: Superconducting Qubit Lab, Spring 2024: PHYS-GA-2059

 

Course Description

Instructor: Javad Shabani, Office: 1071, Phone: (212) 992 8629
Class Hours: 726 Broadway/ MW 11:00-12:15
Office Hours: by appointment
Email: jshabani at nyu dot edu

This special topic course provides a hands-on experience on understanding superconducting qubits. The course targets graduate students who are interested in quantum computing hardware. During the course, students will design superconducting qubit chips which will be fabricated at MIT Lincoln Labs through their Foundry program. The students will then package and measure their chips at NYU in dilution fridges of Prof. Shabani’s lab. At the end of the course, you should be able to tune and measure superconducting qubits and benchmark their performance in terms of coherence times and single and two-qubit gates.

Class Lectures/Topics: 

  • Overview of solid-state quantum computing architectures (focus on superconducting qubits)
  • Nanofabrication and design rules, layers, GDSII,..
  • Verification and simulation (HFSS,..)
  • Concept of qubit control (how software controls hardware)
  • Overview of Cryogenics
  • Overview of microwave requirement (cables, amplifiers, circulators, bandwidth,…)
  • Programming microwave box (readout, write, delays, buffer,..)
  • Tuning a single qubit (how to find the qubit, T1, T2,… )
  • Best practices for improving measurement set up
  • (optional) Tuning a two-qubit circuit

Grading (100%): Lab Reports 60% Quiz: 10% Final Project 30%

Lab Lectures with special thanks to William Strickland

 

The general outline of the labs this semester will be like so:

Weeks 1-3: Design and simulation 
– Simulating Hamiltonians and qubit spectra
– Solving for resonant frequencies and coupling strengths
– Designing qubit chips
– 1-2 Lab reports
Weeks 4-9: Microwave engineering 
– Measuring microwave components (transmission lines, amplifiers, couplers, etc.)
– 2 Lab reports
Weeks 10-13: Qubit Measurements (final projects)
– 2x Single qubit chips and 1x Coupled qubit chip
– Final Projects
 
Please note in bold we will be asking you to write up lab reports. We will shoot for lab reports being due every other week or so. Also note this schedule is subject to change depending on how quickly we get through each topic.
 

Course Material I:

Here are some suggested readings I find very useful
 
This week we’re going to be working on using the scqubits Python package to simulate Transmon qubits. If we have time we will start to design some resonators and try to find their resonant frequencies and couplings to external lines. It’d help if everyone brings their laptop. Readings for this week would be Ref. 1 above Sections 2, 3, and 4. 
 

Course Material II:

Here are some references that go into more detail from last week’s class:
– scqubits package installation guide is here if anyone wants to play around with it. it’s easy if you have pip or conda setup
– link to the installation guide for qiskit metal. The two tutorials I went through today are versions of tutorials provided by qiskit metal (Eigenmode and EPR analysis and Capacitance matrix and LOM analysis). I assume these two youtube videos (capacitance and eigenmode) are helpful as well.
 
Laboratory Assignments (Due one week after posting)