Observation and manipulation of quantum interference in a superconducting Kerr parametric oscillator.

Quantum tunneling is the phenomenon that makes superconducting circuits "quantum". Recently, there has been a renewed interest in using quantum tunneling in phase space of a Kerr parametric oscillator as a resource for quantum information processing. Here, we report a direct observation of quantum interference induced by such tunneling and its dynamics in a planar superconducting circuit through Wigner tomography.

Measurement-based preparation of stable coherent states of a Kerr parametric oscillator.

Kerr parametric oscillators (KPOs) have attracted increasing attention in terms of their application to quantum information processing and quantum simulations. The state preparation and measurement of KPOs are typical requirements when used as qubits. The methods previously proposed for state preparations of KPOs utilize modulation of external fields such as a pump and drive fields.

Enhancing quantum annealing performance by a degenerate two-level system.

Quantum annealing is an innovative idea and method for avoiding the increase of the calculation cost of the combinatorial optimization problem. Since the combinatorial optimization problems are ubiquitous, quantum annealing machine with high efficiency and scalability will give an immeasurable impact on many fields. However, the conventional quantum annealing machine may not have a high success probability for finding the solution because the energy gap closes exponentially as a function of the system size.

Dynamical density fluctuations of superfluids near the critical velocity.

We propose a stability criterion of superfluids in condensed Bose-Einstein systems, which incorporates the spectral function or the autocorrelation function of the local density. Within the Gross-Pitaevskii-Bogoliubov theory, we demonstrate the validity of our criterion for the soliton-emission instability, with use of explicit forms of zero modes of the Bogoliubov equation and a dynamical scaling near the saddle-node bifurcation. We also show that the criterion is applicable to the Landau phonon instability and the Landau roton instability within the single-mode approximation.