Ofer Naaman

Ofer Naaman

Ofer Naaman received a B.Sc. degree in physics from Tel Aviv University in 1998, and a Ph.D. degree in physics from University of California, San Diego in 2003. From 2003 to 2007, he was a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where he worked on superconducting single-electron transistors. From 2007 to 2009 he was a Research Associate at the University of California, Berekeley, where he worked on quantum information in superconducting qubits and parametric amplifiers. From 2009 to 2018 he was a Physicist with Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, working on quantum information, cryogenic memory, and superconducting digital and microwave circuits. In 2018 he joined Google where he is currently a Staff Research Scientist.

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Authored Publications
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    Readout of a quantum processor with high dynamic range Josephson parametric amplifiers
    Andrew Dunsworth
    Markus Rudolf Hoffmann
    Alexis Morvan
    Josh Godfrey Cogan
    Ben Curtin
    Bob Benjamin Buckley
    Trevor Johnathan Mccourt
    John Mark Kreikebaum
    Rajeev Acharya
    Ningfeng Zhu
    Shirin Montazeri
    Jamie Yao
    Rebecca Potter
    Sean Harrington
    Jeremy Patterson Hilton
    Alex Crook
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Trent Huang
    Aaron Shorter
    Vladimir Shvarts
    Alfredo Torres
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Michael C. Hamilton
    Lily MeeKit Laws
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Mike Shearn
    Xiao Mi
    Brooks Riley Foxen
    Frank Carlton Arute
    Alejandro Grajales Dau
    Alexander Lill
    JiunHow Ng
    Justin Thomas Iveland
    Marco Szalay
    Juhwan Yoo
    William Giang
    Alex Opremcak
    Wayne Liu
    Pavel Laptev
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Grayson Robert Young
    Tim Burger
    Jimmy Chen
    Marika Kieferova
    Markus Ansmann
    Murray Nguyen
    Roberto Collins
    Yu Chen
    Reza Fatemi
    Leon Brill
    Ashley Anne Huff
    Ebrahim Forati
    Dave Landhuis
    Kenny Lee
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Alexander Korotkov
    Ani Nersisyan
    Christopher Schuster
    Alexandre Bourassa
    Kannan Aryaperumal Sankaragomathi
    Applied Physics Letters, 122 (2023), pp. 014001
    Preview abstract We demonstrate a high dynamic range Josephson parametric amplifier (JPA) in which the active nonlinear element is implemented using an array of rf-SQUIDs. The device is matched to the 50 $\Omega$ environment with a Klopfenstein-taper impedance transformer and achieves a bandwidth of 250-300 MHz, with input saturation powers up to $-95$~dBm at 20 dB gain. A 54-qubit Sycamore processor was used to benchmark these devices, providing a calibration for readout power, an estimate of amplifier added noise, and a platform for comparison against standard impedance matched parametric amplifiers with a single dc-SQUID. We find that the high power rf-SQUID array design has no adverse effect on system noise, readout fidelity, and qubit dephasing, and we estimate an upper bound on amplifier added noise at 1.6 times the quantum limit. Lastly, amplifiers with this design show no degradation in readout fidelity due to gain compression, which can occur in multi-tone multiplexed readout with traditional JPAs. View details
    Preview abstract We demonstrate a 3-port Josephson parametric circulator, matched to 50 Ohm using second order Chebyshev networks. The device notably operates with two of its signal ports at the same frequency and uses only two out-of-phase pumps at a single frequency. As a consequence, When operated as an isolator it does not require phase coherence between the pumps and the signal, simplifying the requirements for its integration into standard dispersive qubit readout setups. The device utilizes parametric couplers based on a balanced bridge of rf-SQUID arrays, which offer purely parametric coupling and high dynamic range. We characterize the device by measuring its full 3x3 S-matrix as a function of frequency the relative phase between the two pumps. We find up to 15 dB nonreciprocity over a 200 MHz signal band, port match better than 10 dB, low insertion loss of 0.6 dB, and saturation power exceeding -80 dBm. View details
    Josephson parametric amplifier with Chebyshev gain profile and high saturation
    Ryan Kaufman
    Mark Dykman
    Andrea Iorio
    Lara Faoro
    Alex Opremcak
    Robert Gasca
    Tim Burger
    George Sterling
    Physical Review Applied, 20 (2023), pp. 054058
    Preview abstract We demonstrate a Josephson parametric amplifier design with a band-pass impedance matching network based on a third-order Chebyshev prototype. We measured eight amplifiers operating at 4.6~GHz that exhibit gains of 20~dB with less than 1~dB gain ripple and up to 500~MHz bandwidth. The amplifiers further achieve high input saturation powers around $-93$~dBm based on the use of rf-SQUID arrays as their nonlinear element. We characterize the amplifiers' readout efficiency and their signal-to-noise ratio near saturation using a Sycamore processor. In addition, we measure the amplifiers intermodulation distortion in two-tone experiments as a function of input power and inter-tone detuning, and observe excess distortion at small detuning with a pronounced dip as a function of signal power, which we interpret in terms of power-dependent dielectric losses. View details
    Purification-Based Quantum Error Mitigation of Pair-Correlated Electron Simulations
    Christian Gogolin
    Vincent Elfving
    Fotios Gkritsis
    Oumarou Oumarou
    Gian-Luca R. Anselmetti
    Masoud Mohseni
    Andrew Dunsworth
    William J. Huggins
    Markus Rudolf Hoffmann
    Alexis Morvan
    Josh Godfrey Cogan
    Ben Curtin
    Guifre Vidal
    Bob Benjamin Buckley
    Trevor Johnathan Mccourt
    Thomas E O'Brien
    John Mark Kreikebaum
    Rajeev Acharya
    Joonho Lee
    Ningfeng Zhu
    Shirin Montazeri
    Sergei Isakov
    Jamie Yao
    Clarke Smith
    Rebecca Potter
    Sean Harrington
    Jeremy Patterson Hilton
    Alex Crook
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Kim Ming Lau
    Dmitry Abanin
    Trent Huang
    Aaron Shorter
    Steve Habegger
    Richard Ross Allen
    Vladimir Shvarts
    Alfredo Torres
    Stefano Polla
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Michael C. Hamilton
    Dar Gilboa
    Lily MeeKit Laws
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Kyle Anderson
    Ramis Movassagh
    Mike Shearn
    Wojtek Mruczkiewicz
    Desmond Chun Fung Chik
    Xiao Mi
    Brooks Riley Foxen
    Frank Carlton Arute
    Alejandro Grajales Dau
    Yaxing Zhang
    Lara Faoro
    Alexander T. Lill
    Jiun How Ng
    Justin Thomas Iveland
    Marco Szalay
    Orion Martin
    Juhwan Yoo
    Michael Newman
    William Giang
    Alex Opremcak
    William Courtney
    Andrey Klots
    Wayne Liu
    Pavel Laptev
    Paul Conner
    Rolando Diego Somma
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Grayson Robert Young
    Tim Burger
    Ilya Drozdov
    Jimmy Chen
    Marika Kieferova
    Michael Blythe Broughton
    Juan Atalaya
    Markus Ansmann
    Pavol Juhas
    Murray Nguyen
    Daniel Eppens
    Roberto Collins
    Jindra Skruzny
    Igor Aleiner
    Yu Chen
    Reza Fatemi
    Leon Brill
    Ashley Anne Huff
    Doug Strain
    Ebrahim Forati
    Dave Landhuis
    Kenny Lee
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Cody Jones
    Edward Farhi
    Andre Gregory Petukhov
    Alexander Korotkov
    Ani Nersisyan
    Christopher Schuster
    Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
    Trond Ikdahl Andersen
    Alexandre Bourassa
    Kannan Aryaperumal Sankaragomathi
    Nature Physics (2023)
    Preview abstract An important measure of the development of quantum computing platforms has been the simulation of increasingly complex physical systems. Prior to fault-tolerant quantum computing, robust error mitigation strategies are necessary to continue this growth. Here, we study physical simulation within the seniority-zero electron pairing subspace, which affords both a computational stepping stone to a fully correlated model, and an opportunity to validate recently introduced ``purification-based'' error-mitigation strategies. We compare the performance of error mitigation based on doubling quantum resources in time (echo verification) or in space (virtual distillation), on up to 20 qubits of a superconducting qubit quantum processor. We observe a reduction of error by one to two orders of magnitude below less sophisticated techniques (e.g. post-selection); the gain from error mitigation is seen to increase with the system size. Employing these error mitigation strategies enables the implementation of the largest variational algorithm for a correlated chemistry system to-date. Extrapolating performance from these results allows us to estimate minimum requirements for a beyond-classical simulation of electronic structure. We find that, despite the impressive gains from purification-based error mitigation, significant hardware improvements will be required for classically intractable variational chemistry simulations. View details
    Direct Measurement of Nonlocal Interactions in the Many-Body Localized Phase
    Brooks Foxen
    Ben Chiaro
    Andrew Dunsworth
    Rami Barends
    Amit Vainsencher
    John Martinis
    Josh Mutus
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Trent Huang
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Frank Carlton Arute
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Jimmy Chen
    Roberto Collins
    Yu Chen
    Dave Landhuis
    Kunal Arya
    Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
    Physical Review Research, 4 (2022), pp. 013148
    Preview abstract The interplay of interactions and strong disorder can lead to an exotic quantum many-body localized (MBL) phase of matter. Beyond the absence of transport, the MBL phase has distinctive signatures, such as slow dephasing and logarithmic entanglement growth; they commonly result in slow and subtle modifications of the dynamics, rendering their measurement challenging. Here, we experimentally characterize these properties of the MBL phase in a system of coupled superconducting qubits. By implementing phase sensitive techniques, we map out the structure of local integrals of motion in the MBL phase. Tomographic reconstruction of single and two-qubit density matrices allows us to determine the spatial and temporal entanglement growth between the localized sites. In addition, we study the preservation of entanglement in the MBL phase. The interferometric protocols implemented here detect affirmative quantum correlations and exclude artifacts due to the imperfect isolation of the system. By measuring elusive MBL quantities, our work highlights the advantages of phase sensitive measurements in studying novel phases of matter. View details
    Noise-resilient Majorana Edge Modes on a Chain of Superconducting Qubits
    Zijun Chen
    Brooks Foxen
    Masoud Mohseni
    Emily Mount
    Joao Basso
    Andrew Dunsworth
    William J. Huggins
    Yuan Su
    Markus Rudolf Hoffmann
    Alexis Morvan
    Guifre Vidal
    Bob Benjamin Buckley
    Thomas E O'Brien
    John Mark Kreikebaum
    Rajeev Acharya
    Joonho Lee
    Shirin Montazeri
    Sergei Isakov
    Jamie Yao
    Rebecca Potter
    Jeremy Patterson Hilton
    Alexei Kitaev
    Alex Crook
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Kim Ming Lau
    Dmitry Abanin
    Trent Huang
    Steve Habegger
    Alexa Rubinov
    Vladimir Shvarts
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Dar Gilboa
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Mike Shearn
    Wojtek Mruczkiewicz
    Xiao Mi
    Frank Carlton Arute
    Alejandro Grajales Dau
    Yaxing Zhang
    Lara Faoro
    Justin Thomas Iveland
    Marco Szalay
    Orion Martin
    Juhwan Yoo
    Michael Newman
    William Giang
    Alex Opremcak
    William Courtney
    Andrey Klots
    Wayne Liu
    Pavel Laptev
    Paul Conner
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Bernardo Meurer Costa
    Michael Blythe Broughton
    Juan Atalaya
    Daniel Eppens
    Roberto Collins
    Igor Aleiner
    Yu Chen
    Reza Fatemi
    Leon Brill
    Ashley Anne Huff
    Doug Strain
    Ebrahim Forati
    Dave Landhuis
    Kenny Lee
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Michel Henri Devoret
    Cody Jones
    Edward Farhi
    Andre Gregory Petukhov
    Alexander Korotkov
    Christopher Schuster
    Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
    Trond Ikdahl Andersen
    Alexandre Bourassa
    Kannan Aryaperumal Sankaragomathi
    Science (2022) (to appear)
    Preview abstract Inherent symmetry of a quantum system may protect its otherwise fragile states. Leveraging such protection requires testing its robustness against uncontrolled environmental interactions. Using 47 superconducting qubits, we implement the kicked Ising model which exhibits Majorana edge modes (MEMs) protected by a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetry. Remarkably, we find that any multi-qubit Pauli operator overlapping with the MEMs exhibits a uniform decay rate comparable to single-qubit relaxation rates, irrespective of its size or composition. This finding allows us to accurately reconstruct the exponentially localized spatial profiles of the MEMs. Spectroscopic measurements further indicate exponentially suppressed hybridization between the MEMs over larger system sizes, which manifests as a strong resilience against low-frequency noise. Our work elucidates the noise sensitivity of symmetry-protected edge modes in a solid-state environment. View details
    Realizing topologically ordered states on a quantum processor
    A. Greene
    F. Pollmann
    L. Faoro
    C. Knapp
    B. Pato
    Y.-J. Liu
    R. Barends
    J. Mutus
    M. Knap
    A. Smith
    M. Mohseni
    J. Basso
    A. Dunsworth
    W. J. Huggins
    A. R Derk
    B. B. Buckley
    T. E. O'Brien
    S. Montazeri
    S. V. Isakov
    Z. Yao
    S. D. Harrington
    J. Hilton
    A. Kitaev
    F. Kostritsa
    T. Huang
    V. Shvarts
    A. Megrant
    C. Neill
    N. Bushnell
    W. Mruczkiewicz
    X. Mi
    B. Foxen
    F. Arute
    M. Szalay
    O. Martin
    J. Yoo
    M. Newman
    A. Opremcak
    W. Courtney
    P. Laptev
    V. Smelyanskiy
    B. Chiaro
    Z. Chen
    M. Broughton
    J. Atalaya
    D. Eppens
    R. Collins
    I. Aleiner
    Y. Chen
    D. Strain
    D. Landhuis
    P. Yeh
    K. Arya
    N. C. Jones
    E. Farhi
    A. Petukhov
    A. N. Korotkov
    K. Kechedzhi
    Science, 374 (2021), pp. 1237-1241
    Preview abstract The discovery of topological order has revolutionized the understanding of quantum matter in modern physics and provided the theoretical foundation for many quantum error correcting codes. Realizing topologically ordered states has proven to be extremely challenging in both condensed matter and synthetic quantum systems. Here, we prepare the ground state of the emblematic toric code Hamiltonian using an efficient quantum circuit on a superconducting quantum processor. We measure a topological entanglement entropy of Stopo ≈ −0.95 × ln 2 and simulate anyon interferometry to extract the braiding statistics of the emergent excitations. Furthermore, we investigate key aspects of the surface code, including logical state injection and the decay of the non-local order parameter. Our results illustrate the topological nature of these states and demonstrate their potential for implementing the surface code. View details
    Removing leakage-induced correlated errors in superconducting quantum error correction
    Alexandru Paler
    Andrew Dunsworth
    Rami Barends
    John Martinis
    Josh Mutus
    Bob Benjamin Buckley
    Jamie Yao
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Trent Huang
    Nick Redd
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Xiao Mi
    Brooks Riley Foxen
    Frank Carlton Arute
    Pavel Laptev
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Jimmy Chen
    Juan Atalaya
    Roberto Collins
    Yu Chen
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Andre Gregory Petukhov
    Alexander Korotkov
    Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
    Nature Communications, 12 (2021), pp. 1761
    Preview abstract Quantum computing becomes scalable through error correction, but logical error rates only decrease with system size when physical errors are sufficiently uncorrelated. During computation, the unused high energy states of the qubits can become excited. In weakly nonlinear qubits, such as the superconducting transmon, these leakage states are long-lived and mobile, opening a path to errors that are correlated in space and time. The effects of leakage and its mitigation during quantum error correction remain an open question. Here, we report a reset protocol that returns a qubit to the ground state from all relevant higher level states. It requires no additional hardware and combines speed, fidelity, and resilience to noise. We test its performance with the bit-flip stabilizer code, a simplified version of the surface code scheme for quantum error correction. We investigate the accumulation and dynamics of leakage during the stabilizer codes. Using this protocol, we find lower rates of logical errors, and an improved scaling and stability of error suppression with qubits. This demonstration provides a key step on the path towards scalable quantum computing. View details
    Exponential suppression of bit or phase flip errors with repetitive quantum error correction
    Michael Broughton
    Masoud Mohseni
    Andrew Dunsworth
    Alan Ho
    Matt Trevithick
    Eric Ostby
    Alan Derk
    Rami Barends
    Bálint Pató
    Josh Mutus
    Trevor Mccourt
    Thomas E O'Brien
    Sergei Isakov
    Jamie Yao
    Sean Harrington
    Jeremy Patterson Hilton
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Trent Huang
    Vladimir Shvarts
    Nicholas Redd
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Wojtek Mruczkiewicz
    Xiao Mi
    Brooks Riley Foxen
    Frank Carlton Arute
    Marco Szalay
    Orion Martin
    Michael Newman
    Alex Opremcak
    William Courtney
    Pavel Laptev
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Jimmy Chen
    Juan Atalaya
    Daniel Eppens
    Roberto Collins
    Igor Aleiner
    Yu Chen
    Doug Strain
    Dave Landhuis
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Cody Jones
    Edward Farhi
    Andre Gregory Petukhov
    Alexander Korotkov
    Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
    Alexandre Bourassa
    Nature (2021)
    Preview abstract Realizing the potential of quantum computing will require achieving sufficiently low logical error rates. Many applications call for error rates below 10^-15, but state-of-the-art quantum platforms typically have physical error rates near 10^-3. Quantum error correction (QEC) promises to bridge this divide by distributing quantum logical information across many physical qubits so that errors can be corrected. Logical errors are then exponentially suppressed as the number of physical qubits grows, provided that the physical error rates are below a certain threshold. QEC also requires that the errors are local, and that performance is maintained over many rounds of error correction, a major outstanding experimental challenge. Here, we implement 1D repetition codes embedded in a 2D grid of superconducting qubits which demonstrate exponential suppression of bit or phase-flip errors, reducing logical error per round by more than 100x when increasing the number of qubits from 5 to 21. Crucially, this error suppression is stable over 50 rounds of error correction. We also introduce a method for analyzing error correlations with high precision, and characterize the locality of errors in a device performing QEC for the first time. Finally, we perform error detection using a small 2D surface code logical qubit on the same device, and show that the results from both 1D and 2D codes agree with numerical simulations using a simple depolarizing error model. These findings demonstrate that superconducting qubits are on a viable path towards fault tolerant quantum computing. View details
    Tuning Quantum Information Scrambling on a 53-Qubit Processor
    Jeffrey Marshall
    Salvatore Mandra
    Masoud Mohseni
    Andrew Dunsworth
    Alan Ho
    Matt Trevithick
    Eric Ostby
    Alan Derk
    Rami Barends
    Bálint Pató
    Josh Mutus
    Trevor Mccourt
    Thomas E O'Brien
    Sergei Isakov
    Jamie Yao
    Sean Harrington
    Jeremy Patterson Hilton
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Trent Huang
    Vladimir Shvarts
    Nicholas Redd
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Wojtek Mruczkiewicz
    Xiao Mi
    Brooks Riley Foxen
    Frank Carlton Arute
    Marco Szalay
    Orion Martin
    Michael Newman
    Alex Opremcak
    William Courtney
    Pavel Laptev
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Jimmy Chen
    Michael Blythe Broughton
    Juan Atalaya
    Daniel Eppens
    Roberto Collins
    Igor Aleiner
    Yu Chen
    Doug Strain
    Dave Landhuis
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Cody Jones
    Edward Farhi
    Andre Gregory Petukhov
    Alexander Korotkov
    Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
    Alexandre Bourassa
    arXiv (2021)
    Preview abstract As entanglement in a quantum system grows, initially localized quantum information is spread into the exponentially many degrees of freedom of the entire system. This process, known as quantum scrambling, is computationally intensive to study classically and lies at the heart of several modern physics conundrums. Here, we characterize scrambling of different quantum circuits on a 53-qubit programmable quantum processor by measuring their out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs). We observe that the spatiotemporal spread of OTOCs, as well as their circuit-to-circuit fluctuation, unravel in detail the time-scale and extent of quantum scrambling. Comparison with numerical results indicates a high OTOC measurement accuracy despite the large size of the quantum system. Our work establishes OTOC as an experimental tool to diagnose quantum scrambling at the threshold of being classically inaccessible. View details