Generation of Three-Qubit Entangled States using Superconducting Phase Qubits

Understand

Entanglement is one of the key resources required for quantum computation, so experimentally creating and measuring entangled states is of crucial importance in the various physical implementations of a quantum computer.

• In superconducting qubits, two-qubit entangled states have been demonstrated and used to show violations of Bell's Inequality and to implement simple quantum algorithms.
• Unlike the two-qubit case, however, where all maximally-entangled two-qubit states are equivalent up to local changes of basis, three qubits can be entangled in two fundamentally different ways, typified by the states $|\mathrm{GHZ}> = (|000> + |111>)/\sqrt{2}$ and $|\mathrm{W}> = (|001> + |010> + |100>)/\sqrt{3}$.
• Here we demonstrate the operation of three coupled superconducting phase qubits and use them to create and measure $|\mathrm{GHZ}>$ and $|\mathrm{W}>$ states.