Abstract We demonstrate the suppression of photon shot noise dephasing in a superconducting qubit by eliminating its dispersive coupling to the readout cavity. This is achieved in a tunable coupling qubit, where the qubit frequency and coupling rate can be controlled independently. We observe that the coherence time approaches twice the relaxation time and becomes less sensitive to thermal photon noise when the dispersive coupling rate is tuned from several MHz to 22 kHz. This work provides a promising building block in circuit quantum electrodynamics that can hold high coherence and be integrated into larger systems.
Abstract We demonstrate the suppression of photon shot noise dephasing in a superconducting qubit by eliminating its dispersive coupling to the readout cavity. This is achieved in a tunable coupling qubit, where the qubit frequency and coupling rate can be controlled independently. We observe that the coherence time approaches twice the relaxation time and becomes less sensitive to thermal photon noise when the dispersive coupling rate is tuned from several MHz to 22 kHz. This work provides a promising building block in circuit quantum electrodynamics that can hold high coherence and be integrated into larger systems.
We study the photon shot noise dephasing of a superconducting transmon qubit in the strong-dispersive limit, due to the coupling of the qubit to its readout cavity. As each random arrival or departure of a photon is expected to completely dephase the qubit, we can control the rate at which the qubit experiences dephasing events by varying in situ the cavity mode population and decay rate. This allows us to verify a pure dephasing mechanism that matches theoretical predictions, and in fact explains the increased dephasing seen in recent transmon experiments as a function of cryostat temperature. We observe large increases in coherence times as the cavity is decoupled from the environment, and after implementing filtering find that the intrinsic coherence of small Josephson junctions when corrected with a single Hahn echo is greater than several hundred microseconds. Similar filtering and thermalization may be important for other qubit designs in order to prevent photon shot noise from becoming the dominant source of dephasing.
The scalable application of quantum information science will stand on reproducible and controllable high-coherence quantum bits (qubits). Here, we revisit the design and fabrication of the superconducting flux qubit, achieving a planar device with broad frequency tunability, strong anharmonicity, high reproducibility, and relaxation times in excess of 40μs at its flux-insensitive point. Qubit relaxation times T1 across 22 qubits are consistently matched with a single model involving resonator loss, ohmic charge noise, and 1/f flux noise, a noise source previously considered primarily in the context of dephasing. We furthermore demonstrate that qubit dephasing at the flux-insensitive point is dominated by residual thermal photons in the readout resonator. The resulting photon shot noise is mitigated using a dynamical decoupling protocol, resulting in T2≈85μs, approximately the 2T1 limit. In addition to realizing an improved flux qubit, our results uniquely identify photon shot noise as limiting T2 in contemporary qubits based on transverse qubit-resonator interaction.
Abstract The scalable application of quantum information science will stand on reproducible and controllable high-coherence quantum bits (qubits). Here, we revisit the design and fabrication of the superconducting flux qubit, achieving a planar device with broad-frequency tunability, strong anharmonicity, high reproducibility and relaxation times in excess of 40 μs at its flux-insensitive point. Qubit relaxation times T 1 across 22 qubits are consistently matched with a single model involving resonator loss, ohmic charge noise and 1/f -flux noise, a noise source previously considered primarily in the context of dephasing. We furthermore demonstrate that qubit dephasing at the flux-insensitive point is dominated by residual thermal-photons in the readout resonator. The resulting photon shot noise is mitigated using a dynamical decoupling protocol, resulting in T 2 ≈85 μs, approximately the 2 T 1 limit. In addition to realizing an improved flux qubit, our results uniquely identify photon shot noise as limiting T 2 in contemporary qubits based on transverse qubit–resonator interaction.
Superconducting electrical circuits can be used to study the physics of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) in new regimes, therefore realizing circuit QED. For quantum-information processing and quantum optics, an interesting regime of circuit QED is the dispersive regime, where the detuning between the qubit transition frequency and the resonator frequency is much larger than the interaction strength. In this paper, we investigate how nonlinear corrections to the dispersive regime affect the measurement process. We find that in the presence of pure qubit dephasing, photon population of the resonator used for the measurement of the qubit act as an effective heat bath, inducing incoherent relaxation and excitation of the qubit. Measurement thus induces both dephasing and mixing of the qubit, something that can reduce the quantum nondemolition aspect of the readout. Using quantum trajectory theory, we show that this heat bath can induce quantum jumps in the qubit state. Nonlinear effects can also reduce the achievable signal-to-noise ratio of a homodyne measurement of the voltage.
Residual noise photons in a readout resonator become a major source of dephasing for a superconducting qubit when the resonator is optimized for a fast, high-fidelity dispersive readout. Here, we propose and demonstrate a nonlinear Purcell filter that suppresses such an undesirable dephasing process without sacrificing the readout performance. When a readout pulse is applied, the filter automatically reduces the effective linewidth of the readout resonator, increasing the sensitivity of the qubit to the input field. The noise tolerance of the device we have fabricated is shown to be enhanced by a factor of 3 relative to a device with a linear filter. The measurement rate is enhanced by another factor of 3 by utilizing the bifurcation of the nonlinear filter. A readout fidelity of 99.4% and a quantum nondemolition fidelity of 99.2% are achieved using a 40-ns readout pulse. The nonlinear Purcell filter will be an effective tool for realizing a fast, high-fidelity readout without compromising the coherence time of the qubit. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Fast, high-fidelity, and low back-action readout plays a crucial role in the advancement of quantum error correction (QEC). Here, we demonstrate high-performance multiplexed readout of superconducting qubits using a tunable broadband Purcell filter, effectively resolving the fundamental trade-off between measurement speed and photon-noise-induced dephasing. By dynamically tuning the filter parameters, we suppress photon-noise-induced dephasing by a factor of 7 in idle status, while enabling rapid, high-fidelity readout in measurement status. We achieve 99.6\% single-shot readout fidelity with 100~ns readout pulse, limited primarily by relaxation errors during readout. Using a multilevel readout protocol, we further attain 99.9\% fidelity in 50~ns. Simultaneous readout of three qubits using 100~ns pulses achieves an average fidelity of 99.5\% with low crosstalk. Additionally, the readout exhibits high quantum-nondemolition (QND) performance: 99.4\% fidelity over repeated measurements and a low leakage rate below 0.1\%. Building on the tunable broadband filter, we further propose a scalable readout scheme for surface code QEC with enhanced multiplexing capability, offering a promising solution for fast and scalable QEC.