Control and readout architecture for integrated quantum circuits

Quantum technology has gone in few years from “blue sky” science to a rapidly developing field of technology: one of the most important commercial and strategic sectors to invest on, with an increasing focus on real-world applications. This is due to the disruptive performances offered in most notable examples: quantum computing focused to solve computationally impossible tasks of societal importance like optimization, cryptanalysis, machine learning; or advanced sensing techniques to investigate and exploit the quantum nature of light. Superconducting technology offers the best in class devices for quantum computing, Superconducting qubits¹, and single photon sensing, superconducting nanowires single photon detectors operating in RF regime RF-SNSPDs.² In both cases, power dissipation, footprint, limited frequency/accuracy of the standard electronics (CMOS) used for control and readout prevent their scaling up in size to achieve required performances in real world applications.^1,3 The implementation of a scalable architecture goes far beyond the realm of ‘mere’ engineering and a transformative approach is required to exploit the “quantum advantage”.

In this talk I will present preliminary results on our activity at University of Glasgow concerning the development of supercondcuting electronics for on-chip integration of control and readout scheme to scale up with no perfromance degradation qubits and single photon sensors in form of large arrays. I will give also a short overview on our strategy to deploy this technology for advanced imaging, remote sensing, communication and on-chip integrated photonics applications.

References - 1 McDermott et al., Quantum Sci. Technol. 3 (2018) 024004; 2 Kehr et al, Appl. Phys. Lett. 117 (2020) 132602; 3 McCaughan, Supercond. Sci. Technol. 31 (2018) 040501; 4 Shelly et al, IEEExplore, DOI: 10.1109/ISEC.2017.8314235.