ProjectsAn acoustic quantum interface for circuits and spins
In November 2023, the SNSF Sinergia grant An acoustic quantum interface for circuits and spins (AcQuaInt) was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). This four year long research project is led by Prof. Yiwen Chu from the ETH Zurich and involves the WMI as an external partner. The overall goal of this project is to demonstrate a quantum interface between a superconducting qubit and spin qubits associated with silicon-vacancy (SiV) color centers in diamond. The coupling between these two very dissimilar systems will be mediated by thequantized phonon modes of a bulk acoustic resonator, which couples to the superconducting qubit via the piezoelectric effect and to the spins via strain. If successful, such an interface can be used to realize a hybrid quantum computing architecture, where quantum information is processed using fast transmon qubits while during idle times the quantum states are stored in long-lived spin degrees of freedom.
While the experimental implementation of the acoustic interface will be mainly carried out by the groups of Prof. Yiwen Chu and Prof. Christian Degen at ETH Zurich, the Theory Division at WMI, led by Peter Rabl, will be responsible for modelling the system and for developing optimized transfer protocols, which are compatible with the weak spin-phonon couplings and relevant decoherence processes in the system. Here the team can build on the existing expertise in the group on spin-phonon interactions, phononic quantum networks and noise-mitigation strategies.
