Two parallel Josephson junctions.
In Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation:
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+-+-+
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X X
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+-+-+
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In Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation, it is a loop with three Josephson junctions:
+----X-----+
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| |
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+--X----X--+
Superconducting Qubit by NTT SCL (2015)
Source. Offers an interesting interpretation of superposition in that type of device (TODO precise name, seems to be a flux qubit): current going clockwise or current going counter clockwise at the same time. youtu.be/xjlGL4Mvq7A?t=1348 clarifies that this is just one of the types of qubits, and that it was developed by Hans Mooij et. al., with a proposal in 1999 and experiments in 2000. The other type is dual to this one, and the superposition of the other type is between N and N + 1 copper pairs stored in a box.
Their circuit is a loop with three Josephson junctions, in Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation:
+----X-----+
| |
| |
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+--X----X--+
When half the magnetic flux quantum is applied as microwaves, this produces the ground state:where and cancel each other out. And the first excited state is:Then he mentions that:
- to go from 0 to 1, they apply the difference in energy
- if the duration is reduced by half, it creates a superposition of .
Testing and Circuit for a Condenser microphone by RSD Academy (2018)
Source. Not very numerical, but shows a simple working breadboard circuit and an oscilloscope. He whistles with his mouth to get a pretty pure frequency.
That type of microphone requires a bias voltage. The circuit is in Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation:
DC_9---R_10k--+--MICROPHONE--+--G
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+-------V------+
Soundwaves on an oscilloscope by Animated Science (2015)
Source. Dude speaking to microphone. Some analysis of how different sounds look like. No circuit diagram. Probable observation of the Josephson superconducting tunneling effect Updated 2025-04-24 +Created 1970-01-01
Paper by Philip W. Anderson and John M. Rowell that first (?) experimentally observed the Josephson effect.
Paywalled by the American Physical Society as of 2023 at: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.10.230
They used tin-oxide-lead tunnel at 1.5 K. TODO oxide of what? Why two different metals? They say that both films are 200 nm thick, so maybe it is:
-----+------+------+-----
... Sn | SnO2 | PbO2 | Pb ...
-----+------+------------
100nm 100nm
A reconstruction of their circuit in Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation TODO:
DC---R_10---X---G
There are not details of the physical construction of course. Reproducibility lol.
Philosophically, superconducting qubits are good because superconductivity is macroscopic.
It is fun to see that the representation of information in the QC basically uses an LC circuit, which is a very classical resonator circuit.
As mentioned at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_quantum_computing#Qubit_archetypes there are actually a few different types of superconducting qubits:
- flux
- charge
- phase
Input:
Quantum Computing with Superconducting Qubits by Alexandre Blais (2012)
Source. - youtu.be/uPw9nkJAwDY?t=293 superconducting qubits are good because superconductivity is macroscopic. Explains how in non superconducting metal, each electron moves separatelly, and can hit atoms and leak vibration/photos, which lead to observation and quantum error
- youtu.be/uPw9nkJAwDY?t=429 made of aluminium
- youtu.be/uPw9nkJAwDY?t=432 shows the circuit diagram, and notes that the thing is basically a LC circuitusing the newly created just now Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation. Note that the block on the right is a SQUID device.
+-----+ | | | +-+-+ | | | C X X | | | | +-+-+ | | +-----+
- youtu.be/uPw9nkJAwDY?t=471 mentions that the frequency between states 0 and 1 is chosen to be 6 GHz:This explains why we need to go to much lower temperatures than simply the superconducting temperature of aluminum!
- higher frequencies would be harder/more expensive to generate
- lower frequencies would mean less energy according to the Planck relation. And less energy means that thermal energy would matter more, and introduce more noise.6 GHz is aboutFrom the definition of the Boltzmann constant, the temperature which has that average energe of particles is of the order of:
- youtu.be/xjlGL4Mvq7A?t=138 superconducting quantum computer need non-linear components (too brief if you don't know what he means in advance)
- youtu.be/xjlGL4Mvq7A?t=169 quantum computing is hard because we want long coherence but fast control
Used e.g. in the Sycamore processor.
The most basic type of transmon is in Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation, an LC circuit e.g. as mentioned at youtu.be/cb_f9KpYipk?t=180 from Video "The transmon qubit by Leo Di Carlo (2018)":
+----------+
| Island 1 |
+----------+
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X C
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+----------+
| Island 2 |
+----------+
youtu.be/eZJjQGu85Ps?t=2443 from Video "Superconducting Qubits I Part 1 by Zlatko Minev (2020)" describes a (possibly simplified) physical model of it, as two superconducting metal islands linked up by a Josephson junction marked as The circuit is then analogous to a LC circuit, with the islands being the capacitor. The Josephson junction functions as a non-linear inductor.
X
in the diagram as per-Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation:+-------+ +-------+
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| Q_1() |---X---| Q_2() |
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+-------+ +-------+
Others define it with a SQUID device instead: youtu.be/cb_f9KpYipk?t=328 from Video "The transmon qubit by Leo Di Carlo (2018)". He mentions that this allows tuning the inductive element without creating a new device.
Calibration of Transmon Superconducting Qubits by Stefan Titus (2021)
Source. Possibly this Keysight which would make sense.