Evidence for entangled states of two coupled flux qubits

A. Izmalkov, M. Grajcar, E. Il'ichev, Th. Wagner, H. -G. Meyer, A. Yu. Smirnov, M. H. S. Amin, Alec Maassen van den Brink, A. M. Zagoskin

Published 2003-12-12, updated 2004-07-21Version 2

We have studied the low-frequency magnetic susceptibility of two inductively coupled flux qubits using the impedance measurement technique (IMT), through their influence on the resonant properties of a weakly coupled high-quality tank circuit. In a single qubit, an IMT dip in the tank's current--voltage phase angle at the level anticrossing yields the amplitude of coherent flux tunneling. For two qubits, the difference (IMT deficit) between the sum of single-qubit dips and the dip amplitude when both qubits are at degeneracy shows that the system is in a mixture of entangled states (a necessary condition for entanglement). The dependence on temperature and relative bias between the qubits allows one to determine all the parameters of the effective Hamiltonian and equilibrium density matrix, and confirms the formation of entangled eigenstates.