Superconducting pi qubit with three Josephson junctions

Abstract

We propose a new qubit consisting of a superconducting ring with two ordinary zero junctions and one ferromagnetic pi junction. In the system, two degenerate stable states appear in the phase space without an external magnetic field because of a competition between the zero and pi states. Quantum tunneling between the two degenerate states leads to a formation of bonding and antibonding states (coherent states) which are used as a bit. For manipulating the states of the qubit, only small external magnetic field around zero is required. This feature leads to a large-scale integration and a construction of the qubit with a smaller size which is robust to the decoherence by external noises.