We propose a coupling scheme for the three-Josephson junction qubits which uses a connecting loop, but not mutual inductance. Present scheme offers the advantages of a large and tunable level splitting in implementing the controlled-NOT (CNOT) operation. We calculate the switching probabilities of the coupled qubits in the CNOT operations and demonstrate that present CNOT gate can meet the criteria for the fault-tolerant quantum computing. We obtain the coupling strength as a function of the coupling energy of the Josephson junction and the length of the connecting loop which varies with selecting two qubits from the scalable design.Comment: 5 pages with updates, version to appear in Phys. Rev.

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The effective potentials of the rf-SQUID and three-Josephson junction loop with a penetrating external magnetic flux are studied. Using the periodic boundary condition for the phase evolution of the wave function of Cooper pairs, we obtain new periodic potentials with cusp barriers in contrast with the usual smooth double-well potential. The tunneling through the cusp barrier becomes dominant for a parameter regime where the self inductance of the superconducting loop and the Josephson coupling energy are large. Calculating the tunneling frequency we see that the cusp potential may offer a more efficient qubit.

We investigate two types of genuine three-qubit entanglement, known as the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger ͑GHZ͒ and W states, in a macroscopic quantum system. Superconducting flux qubits are theoretically considered in order to generate such states. A phase coupling is proposed to offer enough strength of interactions between qubits. While an excited state can be the W state, the GHZ state is formed at the ground state of the three flux qubits. The GHZ and W states are shown to be robust against external flux fluctuations for feasible experimental realizations. As a macroscopic quantum system, superconducting qubit systems have been investigated intensively in experiments because their system parameters can be controlled to manipulate quantum states coherently. Indeed, the entanglements between two charges, 7 phase, 8,9 and flux qubits 10,11 have been reported. While the timely evolving states in the experiments of charge qubits 7 exhibit a partial entanglement, the excited level ͑eigenstate͒ of capacitively coupled two phase qubits 9 shows higher fidelity for the entanglement. The experiments in Ref. 10 show a possibility that two flux qubits can be entangled by a macroscopic quantum tunneling between two-qubit states, flipping both qubits. Actually, the higher fidelity in the capacitively coupled two phase qubits is caused by the two-qubit tunneling processes. 9 In a very recent study, the two-qubit tunneling process was theoretically shown to play an important role in generating the Bell states, maximally entangled, in the ground and excited states. 12 For multipartite entanglements in superconducting qubit systems, there have been few studies. To produce the GHZ state in three charge qubits, only a way of doing a local qubit operation via time evolutions was suggested. 13 As one of the possible directions to produce such multipartite entanglements, then it is natural to ask how to create the W state as well as the GHZ state in the eigenstates of superconducting three-qubit systems. Here, we consider three flux qubits. Normally, the interaction strength between inductively coupled flux qubits 14 is not so strong that the controllable range of interaction is not sufficiently wide. To control a wide range of interaction strengths in the qubits, we use the phase-coupling scheme [15][16][17][18][19] for three qubit ͓see Fig. 1͑a͔͒ which enables one to generate the GHZ and W states and to keep them robust against external flux fluctuations for feasible experimental realizations.We start with the model shown in Fig. 1͑a͒. The Hamiltonian is written by Ĥ = 1 2 P i T M ij −1 P j + U eff ͑ˆ͒, where The periodic boundary conditions involved in the qubit loops and the connecting loops can be written aswhere q = a, b, and c is qubit index and r, s, and n q integers. Here, f q ϵ ⌽ q / ⌽ 0 with external flux ⌽ q and the superconducting unit flux quantum ⌽ 0 = h / 2e. Two independent conditions in Eqs. ͑2͒ and ͑3͒ are the boundary conditions for connecting loops. For simplicity, we consider E J2 = E J3 = E J and C 2 = C 3 = C,...