Shay Hacohen-Gourgy

We introduce a family of bosonic quantum error-correcting codes built as a rotation-symmetric superposition of squeezed vacuum states, which promise protection against both loss and dephasing noise channels. The robustness of these "squeezed-vacuum codes" arises from being arranged at evenly spaced angles in phase-space, and simultaneously in evenly spaced photon-number support $n \equiv {2k} \! \pmod {2m}$. We present simple preparation circuits: a two-legged code using a Hadamard-conditional-squeezing-Hadamard sequence on an ancilla qubit, and for general "$m$-legged" codewords using sequences of conditional rotations. The performance of these codes is evaluated against loss and dephasing noises using the Knill-Laflamme violation function and benchmarked against cat codes. As the number $m$ of squeezed-vacuum states in a code increases, the code exhibits improved loss tolerance at the cost of higher dephasing sensitivity. We outline implementations in circuit QED and trapped-ion platforms, where high-fidelity Gaussian operations and conditional controls are available or under active development. These results help establish squeezed-vacuum codes as practical, hardware-ready, members of the bosonic codes class.

Developments over the last two decades have opened the path towards quantum technologies in many quantum systems, such as cold atoms, trapped ions, cavity-quantum electrodynamics (QED), and circuit-QED. However the fragility of quantum states to the effects of measurement and decoherence still poses one of the greatest challenges in quantum technology. An imperative capability in this path is quantum feedback, as it enhances the control possibilities and allows for prolonging coherence times through quantum error correction. While changing parameters from shot to shot of an experiment or procedure can be considered feedback, quantum mechanics also allows for the intriguing possibility of performing feedback operations during the measurement process itself. This broader approach to measurements leads to the concepts of weak measurement, quantum trajectories and numerous types of feedback with no classical analogues. These types of processes are the primary focus of this review. We introduce the concept of quantum feedback in the context of circuit QED, an experimental platform with significant potential in quantum feedback and technology. We then discuss several experiments and see how they elucidate the concepts of continuous measurements and feedback. We conclude with an overview of coherent feedback, with application to fault-tolerant error correction.