Generation of multicomponent atomic Schrödinger cat states of up to 20 qubits （reported by Science)

Chao Song1,*, Kai Xu2,3,*, Hekang Li2,*, Yu-Ran Zhang2,4, Xu Zhang1, Wuxin Liu1, Qiujiang Guo1, Zhen Wang1, Wenhui Ren1, Jie Hao5, Hui Feng5, Heng Fan2,3,†, Dongning Zheng2,3,†, Da-Wei Wang1,3, H. Wang1,6,†, Shi-Yao Zhu1,6

Multipartite entangled states are crucial for numerous applications in quantum information science. However, the generation and verification of multipartite entanglement on fully controllable and scalable quantum platforms remains an outstanding challenge. We report the deterministic generation of an 18-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state and multicomponent atomic Schrödinger cat states of up to 20 qubits on a quantum processor, which features 20 superconducting qubits, also referred to as artificial atoms, interconnected by a bus resonator. By engineering a one-axis twisting Hamiltonian, the system of qubits, once initialized, coherently evolves to multicomponent atomic Schrödinger cat states—that is, superpositions of atomic coherent states including the GHZ state—at specific time intervals as expected. Our approach on a solid-state platform should not only stimulate interest in exploring the fundamental physics of quantum many-body systems, but also enable the development of applications in practical quantum metrology and quantum information processing.

Science  09 Aug 2019:
Vol. 365, Issue 6453, pp. 574-577
DOI: 10.1126/science.aay0600

The published article is available at https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6453/574