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DOE OSTI2024

Procrustean entanglement concentration in quantum-classical networking

The success of a future quantum internet will rest in part on the ability of quantum and classical signals to coexist in the same optical fiber infrastructure, a challenging endeavor given the orders of magnitude differences in flux of single-photon-level quantum fields and bright classical traffic. Here, we theoretically describe and experimentally implement Procrustean entanglement concentration for polarization-entangled states contaminated with classical light, showing significant mitigation of crosstalk noise in dense wavelength-division multiplexing. Our approach leverages a pair of polarization-dependent loss emulators to attenuate highly polarized crosstalk that results from imperfect isolation of conventional signals copropagating on shared fiber links. We demonstrate our technique both on the tabletop and over a deployed quantum local area network, finding a substantial improvement of two-qubit entangled state fidelity from approximately 75% to over 92%. This local filtering technique could be used as a preliminary step to reduce asymmetric errors, potentially improving the overall efficiency when combined with more complex error-mitigation techniques in future quantum repeater networks.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

NASA NTRS2018

Mechanism of Quantum Speedup in Novel Population Transfer Protocol for Binary Optimization Problems

We consider a novel quantum population transfer protocol to solve binary optimization problems that exploits quantum many-body dynamics in the delocalized regime. Hard optimization problems are characterized by energy landscape with a large number of local minima separated by large Hamming distances which scale with the problem size. This landscape gives rise to an interesting computational primitive: given an initial bit-string, we are to produce other bit-strings within certain narrow range of energies around the initial state. We consider a specific model we call "impurity band": a system of n qubits in a transverse field, where a number of bitstrings $M<<2^n$ selected at random are assigned random energies distributed in a narrow window of width $W<<1$ around the mean energy $-n$. We demonstrate the existence of the many-body delocalized regime in this model when the spectrum of the model splits into many-body minibands, and a typical eigenstate wave function is a superposition of peaks centered at a large number of local minima. The typical width of the minibands in energy determines the efficiency of the population transfer protocol. We demonstrate theoretically that the population transfer protocol achieves Grover type speedup in the unstructured impurity band model.

Kechedzhi, Kostyantyn↗

DOE OSTI2025

Contextual subspace variational quantum eigensolver calculation of the dissociation curve of molecular nitrogen on a superconducting quantum computer

Abstract We present an experimental demonstration of the Contextual Subspace Variational Quantum Eigensolver on superconducting hardware. Calculating the potential energy curve of molecular nitrogen proves challenging for many conventional quantum chemistry techniques, since static correlation dominates in the dissociation limit. Our quantum simulations retain good agreement with the Full Configuration Interaction energy, outperforming all benchmarked single-reference wavefunction techniques in capturing the bond-breaking appropriately. Moreover, our methodology is competitive with multiconfigurational approaches but at a saving of quantum resource, meaning larger active spaces can be treated for a fixed qubit allowance. To achieve this result, we deploy an error mitigation/suppression strategy comprised of Dynamical Decoupling, Measurement-Error Mitigation and Zero-Noise Extrapolation. Circuit parallelization also provides passive noise-averaging and improves the effective shot yield to reduce the measurement overhead. Furthermore, we introduce a modified adaptive ansatz construction algorithm that incorporates hardware awareness into our variational circuits, minimizing the transpilation cost for the target qubit topology.

Physics↗

DOE OSTI2026

Enhancing Coherence Limits in Superconducting Quantum Systems for Computing and Sensing

This talk will highlight recent efforts at the SQMS Center to develop qudit-based quantum computing architectures using superconducting three-dimensional (3D) cavities, as well as the use of these ultra-coherent cavities for quantum sensing. I will present systematic studies of materials and devices aimed at identifying and mitigating the dominant sources of decoherence—including two-level systems (TLS), quasiparticles, and other noise mechanisms—in both transmons and 3D cavities. These investigations include microwave loss characterization of niobium, tantalum, aluminum, their native oxides, and substrate materials such as silicon and sapphire. By combining measurements on qubits and cavities, we disentangle subsystem-specific loss mechanisms and establish a hierarchy of mitigation strategies, leading to transmon coherence times exceeding one millisecond. I will also discuss studies of quasiparticle dynamics, including quasiparticle bursts observed in qubits operated both above ground and at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory, and the observation that applied magnetic fields can suppress temporal T₁ fluctuations. Building on these advances, we demonstrate a record-coherence two-cell cavity-qudit system with coherence times exceeding 20 milliseconds. Leveraging tunable sideband interactions together with error-resilient protocols, including measurement-based error correction and post-selection, we achieve high-fidelity quantum state control, including the preparation of Fock states up to N=20 with fidelities above 95% and the generation of high-fidelity two-mode entangled states. Finally, I will discuss how these ultra-coherent quantum systems are enabling emerging quantum sensing applications, including searches for dark matter and gravitational waves.

Roy, Tanay [Fermilab] (ORCID:000000019442862X)↗

DOE OSTI2024

An efficient quantum circuit for block encoding a pairing Hamiltonian

We present an efficient quantum circuit for block encoding a pairing Hamiltonian often studied in nuclear physics. Our block encoding scheme does not require mapping the creation and annihilation operators to the Pauli operators and representing the Hamiltonian as a linear combination of unitaries. Instead, we show how to encode the Hamiltonian directly using controlled swap operations. We analyze the gate complexity of the block encoding circuit and show that it scales polynomially with respect to the number of qubits required to represent a quantum state associated with the pairing Hamiltonian. We also show how the block encoding circuit can be combined with the quantum singular value transformation to construct an efficient quantum circuit for approximating the density of states of a pairing Hamiltonian. The techniques presented can be extended to encode more general second-quantized Hamiltonians.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2026

Precise 2D electric field density simulations for superconducting quantum devices

Dielectric loss due to two-level systems is a limiting factor for superconducting qubit relaxation times. These losses arise mostly from nanometer-scale interfacial defect regions in superconducting devices with planar dimensions of microns to millimeters, thus making it resource intensive to accurately simulate the electric field density in these regions with traditional electromagnetic solvers. In this work, we demonstrate a fast boundary integral equation solver that allows precise simulation of electric field density in these thin regions, showing a speedup of around two orders of magnitude over traditional solvers, with relative errors around $10^{-7}$ for a ten-minute solution runtime. By computing participation ratios through Green's first identity without squaring the electric field, our approach is less susceptible to the field singularities near conductor corners. We apply this solver to a basic untrenched coplanar waveguide cross-section, showing that the common assumption of participation ratio linearity with dielectric constant holds well for some interfaces and not others; in particular, while the metal-air (MA) top and corner follow this linear relationship strongly, the MA sidewall does not. We then compare isotropic and anisotropic etching, showing that the MA sidewall and the metal-air-substrate triple junction are the most strongly affected. We are currently leveraging this solver to explore geometries that will uniquely isolate the participation ratios of the different dielectrics. Finally, we are working to combine this solver framework with a full 3D microwave solver to accurately calculate participation ratios for the thin dielectrics that are known sources of loss in superconducting qubits.

Gimbutas, Z. [NIST, Boulder] (ORCID:00000003320982↗

DOE OSTI2025

End-to-end protocol for high-quality quantum approximate optimization algorithm parameters with few shots

The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is a quantum heuristic for combinatorial optimization that has been demonstrated to scale better than state-of-the-art classical solvers for some problems. For a given problem instance, QAOA performance depends crucially on the choice of the parameters. While average-case optimal parameters are available in many cases, meaningful performance gains can be obtained by fine-tuning these parameters for a given instance. This task is especially challenging, however, when the number of circuit executions (shots) is limited. In this work, we develop an end-to-end protocol that combines multiple parameter settings and fine-tuning techniques. We use large-scale numerical experiments to optimize the protocol for the shot-limited setting and observe that optimizers with the simplest internal model (linear) perform best. We implement the optimized pipeline on a trapped-ion processor using up to 32 qubits and 5 QAOA layers, and we demonstrate that the pipeline is robust to small amounts of hardware noise. To the best of our knowledge, these are the largest demonstrations of QAOA parameter fine-tuning on a trapped-ion processor in terms of two-qubit gate count.

quantum algorithms & computation↗

DOE OSTI2026

Exact and Fixed-Point Grover Search with Qudits

Grover's algorithm provides a quadratic speedup for searching unstructured databases and is traditionally implemented with qubits in Hilbert spaces whose dimensions are powers of two. With the advent of quantum platforms utilizing qudits---quantum systems with more than two levels---there is a need to generalize Grover search to these architectures, including heterogeneous systems with qudits of varying dimensions. Here, we present a unified framework for qudit-based Grover search, detailing the construction of oracles and diffusion operators with and without ancilla qubits and generalizing deterministic and fixed-point search variants that ensure exact or bounded success probabilities. We analyze phase-matching techniques and provide explicit circuit decompositions suitable for diverse hardware platforms. We also compare the corresponding trajectories on the Bloch sphere to provide an intuitive visualization of how the different phase choices amplify the target state. These results facilitate flexible, hardware-oriented protocols for implementing Grover search on qudit processors, potentially reducing circuit depth and enhancing success probabilities, thereby offering a practical toolkit for quantum computation and sensing applications leveraging multilevel quantum systems.

Roy, Tanay [Fermilab] (ORCID:000000019442862X)↗

DOE OSTI2024

Surpassing millisecond coherence in on chip superconducting quantum memories by optimizing materials and circuit design

The performance of superconducting quantum circuits for quantum computing has advanced tremendously in recent decades; however, a comprehensive understanding of relaxation mechanisms does not yet exist. In this work, we utilize a multimode approach to characterizing energy losses in superconducting quantum circuits, with the goals of predicting device performance and improving coherence through materials, process, and circuit design optimization. Using this approach, we measure significant reductions in surface and bulk dielectric losses by employing a tantalum-based materials platform and annealed sapphire substrates. With this knowledge we predict the relaxation times of aluminum- and tantalum-based transmon qubits, and find that they are consistent with experimental results. We additionally optimize device geometry to maximize coherence within a coaxial tunnel architecture, and realize on-chip quantum memories with single-photon Ramsey times of 2.0 – 2.7 ms, limited by their energy relaxation times of 1.0 – 1.4 ms. These results demonstrate an advancement towards a more modular and compact coaxial circuit architecture for bosonic qubits with reproducibly high coherence.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

DOE OSTI2025

Integrating magnetic Co-nanopillars in a NbN-based VAN thin film as a multifunctional hybrid metamaterial

NbN thin films are considered as a promising alternative candidate to conventional Al superconducting electrodes for Josephson junction devices, superconducting qubits and quantum logic circuits. Herein, by co-growing ferromagnetic Co with superconducting NbN, self-assembled NbN–Co vertically aligned nanocomposite (VAN) thin films have been successfully deposited on a MgO substrates, with NbN in its cubic superconducting phase. The obtained VAN metamaterials exhibit epitaxial growth of NbN with uniformly dispersed Co nanoplates. Further physical property characterization reveals that the NbN–Co VAN presents ferromagnet properties with strong out-of-plane magnetic anisotropy and optical anisotropy. This hybrid metamaterial system could find future applications in superconducting spintronic devices and quantum computing devices.

Zhang, Yizhi [Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (Un↗

DOE OSTI2024

A Simulation Study of Quantum Clock Synchronization Using Teleportation

An important requirement in implementing distributed computing and sensing application is the synchronization of clocks at various locations. The Internet relies on the Network Time Protocol (NTP), which synchronizes clocks with accuracy in the order of milliseconds. More recently an ensemble of atomic clocks is used for navigation based on GPS. These clocks are highly accurate and provide time with very low uncertainty. Even so, many physics experiments such as distributed LIGO-based systems may require more accurate clock synchronization that is achievable using quantum entanglement. This requires the deployment of a network of quantum clocks synchronized by exploiting entangled atomic clock qubits. In this paper, we carry out a simulation study of synchronizing a network of quantum clocks interconnected by a fiber plant that supports the ESnet; the latter is used to support the classical communication needed for teleportation. We consider an existing protocol for synchro-nizing the atomic clock qubits that relies on the GHZ states. To assess the performance of the protocol we developed a discrete-event simulation of the network using IBM Qiskit framework for underlying quantum gate operations and measurements. The simulation results shed light on the resources required in terms of the number entangled qubits and the time needed to achieve the synchronization of different number of nodes in ESnet.

Kiran, Mariam↗

DOE OSTI2025

Deterministic multi-phonon entanglement between two mechanical resonators on separate substrates

Mechanical systems have emerged as a compelling platform for applications in quantum information, leveraging advances in the control of phonons, the quanta of mechanical vibrations. Experiments have demonstrated the control and measurement of phonon states in mechanical resonators, and while dual-resonator entanglement has been demonstrated, more complex entangled states remain a challenge. Here, we demonstrate rapid multi-phonon entanglement generation and subsequent tomographic analysis, using a scalable platform comprising two surface acoustic wave resonators on separate substrates, each connected to a superconducting qubit. We synthesize a mechanical Bell state with a fidelity of $\mathcal{F}$ = 0.872 ± 0.002, and a multi-phonon entangled N = 2 N00N state with a fidelity of $\mathcal{F}$ = 0.748 ± 0.008. The compact, modular, and scalable platform we demonstrate will enable further advances in the quantum control of complex mechanical systems.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Probing Non-Equilibrium Pair-Breaking and Quasiparticle Dynamics in Nb Superconducting Resonators Under Magnetic Fields

We conducted a comprehensive study of the non-equilibrium dynamics of Cooper pair breaking, quasiparticle (QP) generation, and relaxation in niobium (Nb) cut from superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities, as well as various Nb resonator films from transmon qubits. Using ultrafast pump–probe spectroscopy, we were able to isolate the superconducting coherence and pair-breaking responses. Our results reveal both similarities and notable differences in the temperature- and magnetic-field-dependent dynamics of the SRF cavity and thin-film resonator samples. Moreover, femtosecond-resolved QP generation and relaxation under an applied magnetic field reveals a clear correlation between non-equilibrium QPs and the quality factor of resonators fabricated by using different deposition methods, such as DC sputtering and high-power impulse magnetron sputtering. These findings highlight the pivotal influence of fabrication techniques on the coherence and performance of Nb-based quantum devices, which are vital for applications in superconducting qubits and high-energy superconducting radio-frequency applications.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

DOE OSTI2026

Preparing Fermions via Classical Sampling and Linear Combinations of Unitaries

We present an extension of the Evolving density matrices on Qubits (E$ρ$OQ) framework that enables efficient fault-tolerant preparation of fermionic quantum states. The original method circumvents state preparation by stochastic sampling, but faces a sign problem in fermionic systems leading to a large number of circuits necessary. We resolve this by combining classical stochastic sampling with a linear combination of unitaries method that avoids the exponential circuit scaling that plagued naïve implementations. The resulting algorithm requires $\mathcal{O}(M^2)$$R_Z$ rotations for circuit preparation, where $M$ is the number of retained basis states. We validate the method for ground and excited states in the Thirring model, including by computing two-point correlation functions relevant to scattering. In this model for fixed accuracy $\varepsilon$, $M$ is found to scale empirically as $M \propto \frac{1}{mg}\log(1/g)\log(1/m)$.

Gustafson, Erik J. [RIACS, Mtn. View] (ORCID:00000↗

DOE OSTI2026

Existence of a robust optimal control process for efficient measurements in a two-qubit system

The verification of quantum entanglement is essential for quality control in quantum communication. In this work we propose an efficient protocol to directly verify the two-qubit entanglement of a known target state through a single-expectation-value measurement. Our method provides exact entanglement quantification using the concurrence measure without performing quantum state tomography. We prove the existence of a unitary transformation that drives a known initial state of a two-qubit system to a designated final state, where the trace over a chosen observable directly yields the concurrence of the initial state. Furthermore, we implement an optimal control process of that transformation and demonstrate its effectiveness through numerical simulations. We also show that this process is robust to environmental noise. Our approach offers advantages in directly verifying entanglement with low circuit depth, making it suitable for industrial-scale quality control of entanglement generation. Our results presented here provide mathematical justification for our earlier computational experiments.

Rodriguez, Ricardo [McPherson Coll.] (ORCID:000000↗

DOE OSTI2026

Integrated-photonics-based systems for polarization-gradient cooling of trapped ions

Trapped ions are a promising modality for quantum systems, with demonstrated utility as the basis for quantum processors and optical clocks. However, traditional trapped-ion systems are implemented using complex free-space optical configurations, whose large size and susceptibility to vibrations and drift inhibit scaling to large numbers of qubits. In recent years, integrated-photonics-based systems have been demonstrated as an avenue to address the challenge of scaling trapped-ion systems while maintaining high fidelities. While these previous demonstrations have implemented both Doppler and resolved-sideband cooling of trapped ions, these cooling techniques are fundamentally limited in efficiency. In contrast, polarization-gradient cooling can enable faster and more power-efficient cooling and, therefore, improved computational efficiencies in trapped-ion systems. While free-space implementations of polarization-gradient cooling have demonstrated advantages over other cooling mechanisms, polarization-gradient cooling has never previously been implemented using integrated photonics. In this paper, we design and experimentally demonstrate key polarization-diverse integrated-photonics devices and utilize them to implement a variety of integrated-photonics-based polarization-gradient-cooling systems, culminating in the first experimental demonstration of polarization-gradient cooling of a trapped ion by an integrated-photonics-based system. By demonstrating polarization-gradient cooling using an integrated-photonics-based system and, in general, opening up the field of polarization-diverse integrated-photonics-based devices and systems for trapped ions, this work facilitates new capabilities for integrated-photonics-based trapped-ion platforms.

atom optics↗

DOE OSTI2025

Compressing Hamiltonians with ab initio downfolding for simulating strongly-correlated materials on quantum computers

The accurate first-principles description of strongly correlated materials is an important and challenging problem in condensed matter physics. Ab initio downfolding has emerged as a way of deriving compressed many-body Hamiltonians that maintain the essential physics of strongly correlated materials. The solution of these material-specific models is still exponentially difficult to generate on classical computers, but quantum algorithms allow for a significant speed-up in obtaining the ground states of these compressed Hamiltonians. Here, we demonstrate that using quantum algorithms to obtain the properties of downfolded Hamiltonians can indeed yield high-fidelity solutions. By combining ab initio downfolding and variational quantum eigensolvers, we correctly predict the antiferromagnetic state of one-dimensional cuprate Ca 2 Cu O 3 , the excitonic ground state of monolayer W Te 2 , and the charge-ordered state of correlated metal Sr VO 3 . Numerical simulations using a classical tensor network implementation of variational quantum eigensolvers allow us to simulate large models with up to 54 qubits and encompassing up to four bands in the correlated subspace, which is indicative of the complexity that our framework can address. Through these methods we demonstrate the potential of classical preoptimization and downfolding techniques for enabling efficient materials simulation using quantum algorithms.

Alvertis, Antonios M. [NASA, Ames; LBNL, Berkeley]↗

DOE OSTI2025

Toward a 2D Local Implementation of Quantum Low-Density Parity-Check Codes

Geometric locality is an important theoretical and practical factor for quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes that affects code performance and ease of physical realization. For device architectures restricted to two-dimensional (2D) local gates, naively implementing the high-rate codes suitable for low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computing incurs prohibitive overhead. In this work, we present an error-correction protocol built on a bilayer architecture that aims to reduce operational overheads when restricted to 2D local gates by measuring some generators less frequently than others. We investigate the family of bivariate-bicycle qLDPC codes and show that they are well suited for a parallel syndrome-measurement scheme using fast routing with local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Through circuit-level simulations, we find that in some parameter regimes, bivariate-bicycle codes implemented with this protocol have logical error rates comparable to the surface code while using fewer physical qubits. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

Berthusen, Noah (ORCID:0000000275862786)↗