Patent 7042005 was granted and assigned to D-Wave Systems on May, 2006 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The present invention involves a quantum computing apparatus that includes a substrate attached to which is a flux shield upon which is at least one element of circuitry. The flux shield has an aperture. Inside the aperture is a superconducting structure. The superconducting structure and the circuitry interact so that a change in a state of the superconducting structure can be detected by the circuitry. The present invention provides a method for initializing and measuring the state of a superconducting structure by adjusting and measuring the current in an element of circuitry coupled to the structure by a flux shield. The present invention provides a mechanism for coupling qubits. In embodiments of the present invention, qubits are selectively coupled by a coupling circuit that can be on a second substrate. The coupling of the qubit to the coupling circuit is enhanced by the presence of a flux shield.