Adiabatic quantum computation with superconducting qubits

An apparatus comprising:

• (A) a plurality of superconducting charge qubits, wherein
• (i) each respective first superconducting charge qubit in said plurality of superconducting charge qubits is coupled with a respective second superconducting charge qubit in the plurality of superconducting charge qubits such that the first respective superconducting charge qubit and the second respective superconducting charge qubit define a predetermined coupling strength and wherein the predetermined coupling strength between each said first respective superconducting charge qubit and each said second respective superconducting charge qubit in said plurality of superconducting charge qubits collectively define a computational problem to be solved, and
• (ii) each superconducting charge qubit in said plurality of superconducting charge qubits is capable of being in one of at least two configurations including:
• a first configuration in accordance with an initialization Hamiltonian H0;
• and
• a second configuration in accordance with a problem Hamiltonian HP;
• and
• (B) an electrometer coupled to a superconducting charge qubit in said plurality of superconducting charge qubits.

A method for computing using a quantum system comprising a plurality of superconducting charge qubits, wherein the quantum system is coupled to an electrometer and the quantum system is capable of being in any one of at least two configurations, the at least two configurations including:

• a first configuration characterized by an initialization Hamiltonian H0, and
• a second configuration characterized by a problem Hamiltonian HP having a ground state, and wherein the plurality of superconducting charge qubits are arranged with respect to one another, with a predetermined number of couplings between respective pairs of superconducting charge qubits in the plurality of charge qubits, such that the plurality of superconducting charge qubits, coupled by the predetermined number of couplings, collectively define a computational problem to be solved;
• the method comprising:
• initializing the quantum system to the initialization Hamiltonian HO;
• adiabatically changing the quantum system until it is described by the ground state of the problem Hamiltonian HP;
• and
• reading out the quantum state of each superconducting charge qubit in the quantum system through the electrometer, thereby solving the computational problem to be solved.