MathieuFunctions.jl

Julia package for Mathieu functions.

Mathieu functions are the eigenvalues and eigenfunction of Mathieu's equation (for more details, see NIST's Digital Library of Mathematical Functions).

Implementation

This implementation is based on an algorithm described by Shirts, which revolves around an application of Floquet's theorem.

Interestingly, an equivalent description can be obtained by considering the eigenstates and eigenenergies of a particular type of artificial atom based on superconducting circuits (see Cotet's Ph.D. thesis for a discussion of this connection, or a recent paper by Koch et al.). In this physical picture, Mathieu functions can be approximated by computing the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of a Hamiltonian truncated to a sufficiently high dimension (this Hamiltonian corresponds to a symmetric tri-diagonal matrix, so this approximation is rather convenient for numerics).

The current tests consist of checks against a table generated by Mathematica (which, to our knowledge, has the most complete implementation of Mathieu functions amongst commonly accessible mathematical software packages).

Installation

The package can be installed from the Julia registries

(v1.x) pkg> add MathieuFunctions

Mathieu equation characteristic values (eigenvalues)

We follow the notation used in NIST's Digital Library of Mathematical Functions,

DLMF	Julia call	Description
aⱼ(q)	`charA(q,j)`	Integer order Mathieu characteristic value of even parity
bⱼ(q)	`charB(q,j)`	Integer order Mathieu characteristic value of odd parity
λ₍ᵥ₊ⱼ₎(q)	`charλ(q,v,j)`	Real-valued order Mathieu characteristic value

For integer order characteristic values, our implementation yields

which should be contrasted with the corresponding plot in the DTMF @ NIST.

Similarly, for real-valued order, our implementation yields

which should be contrasted with the corresponding plot in the DTMF @ NIST.

Application: Eigenstates and energies for transmon and quantronium qubits

Thanks to the way that the Mathieu characteristic values are computed, the order indexing convention used here is particularly convenient for computing the energy spectrum of a broad class of superconducting qubits including the quantronium and the transmon.

As an example of how this package may be used, here is the Julia code that reproduces the energy spectrum illustrated in Koch et al.

using MathieuFunctions, PyPlot

EJoverEC = 30;
EC       = 0.35; # GHz
nLevels  = 10;
nCharge  = 2; 
nData    = 1001;

Nstart = 5;

q = -(1/2)*EJoverEC;
tol = 1e-12;

ng = LinRange(-nCharge,nCharge,nData);
nu = -2*ng;

a = zeros(nData,nLevels);
N = zeros(nData,1);
Err = zeros(nData,1);
for i=1:nData
    #println(nu[i])
    a[i,:] = charλ(q,nu[i],k=1:nLevels);
end

E = EC*a;
Eng_half = charλ(q,-1,k=1:nLevels);
Eng_0    = charλ(q, 0,k=1:nLevels);
E01      = Eng_half[2] - Eng_half[1];

plot(ng,(E .- Eng_0[1])/E01);xlabel(L"$n_g$");ylabel(L"$E$");
ylim(-.5,5)

TODO

Some documentation with examples
Support for characteristic values (integer and non-integer order)
- Unify order indexing, match DLMF conventions
Support for characteristic function (integer and non-integer order)

License

MIT (See TLDR and "The MIT License, line by line". )

Contributors

John Lapeyre, Daniel Greenbaum and Marcus P da Silva

Acknowledgements

This effort was partially supported by IARPA under the LogiQ program.

Copyright

Raytheon BBN Technologies

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