This talk is intended for local QIS researchers at the University of Illinois; please do not share it more broadly. The link will be sent to the IQUIST mailing lists before the seminar.
Abstract: Superconducting artificial atoms are created by connecting Josephson junctions, which are nonlinear, non-dissipative elements, to simple electrical circuits. Individual artificial atoms can be coupled using this same toolbox of inductors, capacitors, and Josephson junctions to build novel quantum materials. In this talk, I will give an introduction to the fluxonium and discuss prospects for using the fluxonium artificial atom as a building block for topological materials. Topological phases of matter have excitations with exotic quantum statistics and have been proposed as a platform for robust quantum computation. Building a topological material from the bottom-up, however, requires individual components with degenerate ground states and strong coupling between these components. As a step toward this goal, we have developed an artificial molecule composed of two strongly-coupled fluxonium artificial atoms, which realizes a Hamiltonian with a dominant σzσz-type interaction between the individual atoms. We find excellent agreement between the measured spectroscopy of the circuit and the theoretically-predicted level transitions, which highlights the suitability of superconducting circuits for implementing tailored quantum systems.
