We present a new method for determining pulse imperfections and improving the single-gate fidelity in a superconducting qubit. By applying consecutive positive and negative π pulses, we amplify the qubit evolution due to microwave pulse distortions, which causes the qubit state to rotate around an axis perpendicular to the intended rotation axis. Measuring these rotations as a function of pulse period allows us to reconstruct the shape of the microwave pulse arriving at the sample. Using the extracted response to predistort the input signal, we are able to reduce the average error per gate by 37%, which enables us to reach an average single-qubit gate fidelity higher than 0.998.
We present a new method for determining pulse imperfections and improving the single-gate fidelity in a superconducting qubit. By applying consecutive positive and negative π pulses, we amplify the qubit evolution due to microwave pulse distortions, which causes the qubit state to rotate around an axis perpendicular to the intended rotation axis. Measuring these rotations as a function of pulse period allows us to reconstruct the shape of the microwave pulse arriving at the sample. Using the extracted response to predistort the input signal, we are able to reduce the average error per gate by 37%, which enables us to reach an average single-qubit gate fidelity higher than 0.998.
For superconducting quantum processors, stable high-fidelity two-qubit operations depend on precise flux control of the tunable coupler. However, the pulse distortion poses a significant challenge to the control precision. Current calibration methods, which often rely on microwave crosstalk or additional readout resonators for coupler excitation and readout, tend to be cumbersome and inefficient, especially when couplers only have flux control. Here, we introduce and experimentally validate a pulse calibration scheme that exploits the strong coupling between qubits and couplers, eliminating the need for extra coupler readout and excitation. Our method directly measures the short-time and long-time step responses of the coupler flux pulse transient, enabling us to apply predistortion to subsequent signals using fast Fourier transformation and deconvolution. This approach not only simplifies the calibration process, but also significantly improves the precision and stability of the flux control. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method through the implementation of diabatic controlled-Z (cz) and iswap gates with fidelities of $99.61\mathrm{%}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.04\mathrm{%}$ and $99.82\mathrm{%}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.02\mathrm{%}$, respectively, as well as a series of diabatic controlled-phase gates with high fidelities characterized by cross-entropy benchmarking. The consistency and robustness of our technique are further validated by the reduction in pulse distortion and phase error observed across multilayer cz gates. These results underscore the potential of our calibration and predistortion method to enhance the performance of two-qubit gates in superconducting quantum processors.
Improving gate performance is vital for scalable quantum computing. Universal quantum computing also requires gate fidelity to reach a high level. For a superconducting quantum processor, which operates in the microwave band, the single-qubit gates are usually realized with microwave driving. The crosstalk between microwave pulses is a non-negligible error source. In this article, we propose an error mitigation scheme to address this crosstalk issue for single-qubit gates. There are three steps in our method. First, by controlling the detuning between qubits, the microwave induced classical crosstalk error can be constrained within the computational subspace. Second, by applying the general decomposition procedure, the arbitrary single-qubit gate can be decomposed as a sequence of X and virtual Z gates. Finally, by optimizing the parameters in virtual Z gates, the error constrained in the computational space can be corrected. Using our method, no additional compensation signals are needed, arbitrary single-qubit gate time will not be prolonged, and the circuit depth containing simultaneous single-qubit gates will also not increase. The simulation results show that, in a specific regime of qubit–qubit detuning, the infidelities of simultaneous single-qubit gates can be as low as that without microwave crosstalk.
Abstract Semiconductor spin qubits demonstrated single-qubit gates with fidelities up to 99.9 % benchmarked in the single-qubit subspace. However, tomographic characterizations reveal non-negligible crosstalk errors in a larger space. Additionally, it was long thought that the two-qubit gate performance is limited by charge noise, which couples to the qubits via the exchange interaction. Here, we show that coherent error sources such as a limited bandwidth of the control signals, diabaticity errors, microwave crosstalk, and non-linear transfer functions can equally limit the fidelity. We report a simple theoretical framework for pulse optimization that relates erroneous dynamics to spectral concentration problems and allows for the reuse of existing signal shaping methods on a larger set of gate operations. We apply this framework to common gate operations for spin qubits and show that simple pulse shaping techniques can significantly improve the performance of these gate operations in the presence of such coherent error sources. The methods presented in the paper were used to demonstrate two-qubit gate fidelities with F > 99.5 % in Xue et al (2022 Nature 601 343). We also find that single and two-qubit gates can be optimized using the same pulse shape. We use analytic derivations and numerical simulations to arrive at predicted gate fidelities greater than 99.9% with duration less than, 4 / ( Δ E z ) where Δ E z is the difference in qubit frequencies.
Single-qubit gates on superconducting quantum processors are typically implemented using microwave pulses applied through dedicated control lines. However, these microwave pulses may also drive other qubits due to crosstalk arising from capacitive coupling and wavefunction overlap in systems with closely spaced transition frequencies. Crosstalk and frequency crowding increase errors during simultaneous single-qubit operations relative to isolated gates, thus forming a major bottleneck for scaling superconducting quantum processors. In this work, we combine model-based qubit frequency optimization with pulse shaping to demonstrate crosstalk error mitigation in single-qubit gates on a 49-qubit superconducting quantum processor. We introduce and experimentally verify an analytical model of simultaneous single-qubit gate error caused by microwave crosstalk that depends on a given pulse shape. By employing a model-based optimization strategy of qubit frequencies, we minimize the crosstalk-induced error across the processor and achieve a mean simultaneous single-qubit gate fidelity of 99.96% for a 16-ns gate duration, approaching the mean individual gate fidelity. To further reduce the simultaneous error and required qubit frequency bandwidth on high-crosstalk qubit pairs, we introduce a crosstalk transition suppression (CTS) pulse shaping technique that minimizes the spectral energy around transitions inducing leakage and crosstalk errors. Finally, we combine CTS with model-based frequency optimization across the device and experimentally show a systematic reduction in the required qubit frequency bandwidth for high-fidelity simultaneous gates, supported by simulations of systems with up to 1000 qubits. By alleviating constraints on qubit frequency bandwidth for parallel single-qubit operations, this work represents an important step for scaling towards larger quantum processors.
In a Josephson phase qubit, the coherent manipulations of the computational states are achieved by modulating an applied ac current, typically in the microwave range. In this work, we show that it is possible to find optimal modulations of the bias current to achieve high-fidelity gates. We apply quantum optimal control theory to determine the form of the pulses and study in details the case of a NOT gate. To test the efficiency of the optimized pulses in an experimental setup, we also address the effect of possible imperfections in the pulses shapes, the role of off-resonance elements in the Hamiltonian, and the effect of capacitive interaction with a second qubit.
Improving the speed and fidelity of quantum logic gates is essential to reach quantum advantage with future quantum computers. However, fast logic gates lead to increased leakage errors in superconducting quantum processors based on qubits with low anharmonicity, such as transmons. To reduce leakage errors, we propose and experimentally demonstrate two new analytical methods, Fourier ansatz spectrum tuning derivative removal by adiabatic gate (FAST DRAG) and higher-derivative (HD) DRAG, both of which enable shaping single-qubit control pulses in the frequency domain to achieve stronger suppression of leakage transitions compared to previously demonstrated pulse shapes. Using the new methods to suppress the e f transition of a transmon qubit with an anharmonicity of − 212 MHz, we implement R X ( π / 2 ) gates achieving a leakage error below 3.0 × 10 − 5 down to a gate duration of 6.25 ns without the need for iterative closed-loop optimization. The obtained leakage error represents a 20-fold reduction in leakage compared to a conventional cosine DRAG pulse. Employing the FAST DRAG method, we further achieve an error per gate of ( 1.56 ± 0.07 ) × 10 − 4 at a 7.9-ns gate duration, outperforming conventional pulse shapes both in terms of error and gate speed. Furthermore, we study error-amplifying measurements for the characterization of temporal microwave control-pulse distortions, and demonstrate that non-Markovian coherent errors caused by such distortions may be a significant source of error for sub-10-ns single-qubit gates unless corrected using predistortion. Published by the American Physical Society 2024