Measuring and Simulating T1 and T2 for Qubits Rahaf Youssef and Supervisor: Adam Lyon Saint Olaf College, MN 50557 and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, IL 60510 (Dated: August 7, 2020) Quantum computers are computational devices that employ quantum-mechanical phenomena in solving problems that are classically intractable. Future applications of quantum computers include prime factorization of large numbers, implementing more efficient search algorithms, among various applications. Most quantum algorithms utilize superposition of states in solving a given problem. Therefore, the decay of the superposition of states is a limitation to performing complex quantum algorithms. Quantum decoherence is usually characterized by measuring two constants: T1 (thermal relaxation time) and T2 (dephasing time). Here we present an overview of measuring and simulating T1 and T2 for qubits and qudits using QuTip and Qiskit. I. INTRODUCTION this report, we provide an approach as to how T1 and T2 values are calculated and simulated for quantum systems. Quantum computers perform computations exploiting In addition, we compare simulated values of T1 and T2 quantum mechanics to a possible advantage, allowing us with those of a real quantum computer’s measurements. to prepare and manipulate states that do not have a clas- IBMQ Experience is used to prepare, run and measure sical equivalent. In particular, phenomena like superpo- quantum states, while QuTip is used for simulation. sition and entanglement may enable quantum computers to outperform their classical counterparts in certain ap- plications. In fact, it has been shown that the number of II. BACKGROUND steps required to find the prime factors of an integer in- creases exponentially as the integer increases [1]. Shor’s The basic unit of information for quantum computers factoring algorithm, however, can factor prime numbers is a qubit. In classical computers, bits are manifested in polynomial time. In fact, there has been promising re- by transistors that are turned on or off through applying sults from the D-Wave 2000Q computer as it was able to electrical pulses. The value of bit is deterministic and is factor the number 376289 using 94 logical qubit gates [2]. measured to be either 0 or 1. For quantum computers, It is thus essential to develop new encryption protocols qubits are implemented as a two-state device exhibiting since the security of online transactions assumes the im- desired quantum-mechanical phenomena such as super- possibility of factoring large numbers in a reasonable time position or entanglement. using classical algorithms. Furthermore, quantum com- Theoretically, qubits are represented as vectors in puters hold promise of efficiently simulating large atomic Hilbert space, a complex vector space with an inner prod- systems in order to understand their properties. The uct. Qubits can exist in the state j0i or j1i or a su- calculation time scales exponentially using classical com- perposition of both states such that j i= αj0i + βj1i, puters as the number of atoms grows, while it grows poly- where α and β are probability amplitudes, implying that nomially on quantum computers [3]. α2 + β2 = 1. Quantum gates are defined as opera- Implementing these useful quantum algorithms is con- tions on quantum states represented by unitary matrices, tingent upon building accurate quantum hardware that is U yU=UU y=I, making quantum computations reversible. not affected by noise. Environmental noise decreases co- Gates may be visualized as rotations around the Bloch herence time of qubits, meaning that qubits do not stay sphere in Figure 1. The Bloch sphere has basis states in a desired state long enough to carry out a complex given by the x, y, and z axes. The direction of the state computation. Right now, the coherence time of qubits is , the red vector on the sphere, determines the state of on the order of 10’s of microseconds, which is not long the qubit. For example, if is pointing in the positive z- enough to solve interesting problems. Therefore, mitigat- direction, the qubit is in the j0i state and if it is pointing ing noise and designing noise-tolerant quantum comput- in the negative z-direction, the qubit is in the j1i state. ers is a necessity. To that end, harnessing the full power If is pointing anywhere between j0i or j1i, the qubit is of quantum computers necessitate characterization and in a superposition of both states. It is also worth noting understanding of noise sources and how they impact a that the Bloch Sphere is a viable representation of a sin- given quantum system. gle qubit only, as states of higher dimensions cannot be Often times, T1 and T2 are used to quantify noise. In visualized. 2 putational basis i.e. the j+i,|−i basis or the j0i,j1i basis. Measuring the state of the system causes the wave func- tion to collapse into one state, destroying the quantum state. However, creative techniques, such as quantum non-demolishing measurement(QND), have been devel- oped to observe the state of the system without causing its state decay. That way, it is possible to continuously monitor the state of the qubit for some time before it eventually decays due to energy dissipation. III. METHODS In order to simulate quantum systems, the following Figure 1: The Bloch Sphere tools were used Experimentally, there are numerous techniques to • Qiskit: IBMQ Experience is an online platform fabricate qubits. Generally, in order for a qubit to per- that enables the general public to run quantum form well, it must satisfy some requirements such as be- algorithms on real quantum computers. Qiskit, ing loosely coupled to their environment and strongly an open-source software development kit, provides coupled to a classical control system. It is also imper- users with pulse-level control. The used model ative for the qubit to be an anharmonic oscillator. A of computation is quantum circuits, where quan- harmonic oscillator would not work because all levels are tum algorithms consist of consecutive gates. IBM’s uniformly spaced, so a pulse that excites the first tran- quantum computers consist of superconducting sition would also excite the second (and third and any transmon qubits that are based in their research others)[4]. Hence, the goal is to design an anharmonic centers [7]. oscillator where the two lowest energy levels are used • QuTip: an open-source software for simulating the as qubit.For the purpose of this report, only the real- dynamics of quantum systems. It contains built- ization of transmission line shunted plasma oscillation in functions that represent different noise models, qubits (transmon qubits) will be discussed. The trans- offering an easy-to-use simulation of open quantum mon circuit, as shown in Figure 2, consists of a Josephson systems. Finally, QuTip is Python-based and can Junction shunted by a relatively large capacitor so that be run on Jupyter notebooks [8]. noise charge is reduced [5]. The Josephson Junction is responsible for anharmonicity, which allows for selective Measuring T1: thermal relaxation time is defined as qubit control. The circuit then could be conceived as an the time needed for a qubit to move from the excited artificial atom. This design minimizes energy dissipation, state j1i to the ground state j0i. The process could be resulting in longer coherence time ≈100µs and allowing formulated by the density matrix ρ = αj ih j + βjgihgj for longer computations to take place [6]. where α2 is the probability that the qubit is in state j i whereas β2 is the probability that a qubit is in the ground state jgi. As time goes by, the value of β2 approaches 1. Experimentally, T1 is the time by which the population of excited state decays to 1/e of its initial value, Pe(t) = −t=T1 Pe(0)e [5]. Figure 2: Transmon Qubit:the transmon qubit circuit con- tains a Josephson Junction shunted by a relatively large ca- pacitor so that EJ EC , where Ec is the charging energy (kinetic energy in capacitor) and EJ is the potential energy stored in the Josephson Junction Measurement After applying gates to qubits, a mea- surement should be done in order to identify the state of the system. Measurement is performed in a given com- 3 Experimentally, the value of T1 is measured through the following sequence of operations [5]: 1. Prepare the qubit in the excited state by sending a π-pulse to the qubit. 2. Wait some time t. 3. Measure the state of the qubit. Measuring T2: dephasing time is defined as the elapsed time before a qubit’s resonance frequency be- comes unidentified. T2 could be thought of as the loss Figure 3: A measurement of T1 for a qubit in µs. of quantum coherence over time. The measurement of T2 is achieved through the following sequence of opera- tions [5]: 1. Prepare the qubit in superposition state p1 (jgi + 2 π ijei) by applying a 2 -pulse to the qubit. 2. Wait some time t. π 3. Apply another 2 -pulse to bring back the qubit to ground state. 4. measure the state of the qubit. Figure 4: A measurement of T2 for a qubit in µs. IV. RESULTS Using Qiskit: for the experiments presented in Fig- ures 1 and 2, the ibmqx2 device was used. Ibmqx2 is a five-qubit computer that is based in Yorktown, New York. Both experiments, measuring T1 and T2, were pre- pared, run and measured on the first qubit (qubit 0) with 1024 shots (number of times the system was prepared, run, and measured). According to IBM’s specifications of the device, on average, the qubit’s T1 ≈ 52 µs, while the value of T2 ≈ 77 µs. Though our experiments did not yield these exact numbers, it still provided insights Figure 5: Simulation of T of the first excited state for into the order of magnitude for both values, which is µs.