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arXiv:1910.01090 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Right-sizing fluxonium against charge noise

Ari Mizel, Yariv Yanay

Published Jul 27, 2020• 17 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Fluxonium qubits employ a chain of $N$ Josephson junctions in series. We investigate how the charge-noise induced coherence time ${T}_{2}$ of the qubit depends upon $N$, holding fixed the chain's effective capacitance and inductance. The pure dephasing rate decreases with $N$, but the relaxation rate increases. As a result, ${T}_{2}$ achieves a maximum. The optimal $N$ can be much smaller than the number typically chosen in experiments, implying that fluxonium qubits can be significantly simplified without compromising performance.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.102.014512

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Quantum computing provides significantly more efficient methods than classical computers for doing rigorous calculations such as encryption, search algorithms, and physical simulations. This is accomplished through the use of qubits which exist in a superposition of multiple states at once allowing for both complex and fast calculations. Environmental fluctuations interfere with these states and resulting in decoherence and dephasing and the break down of the algorithm. One type of qubit is the fluxonium: a superconducting artificial atom derived from the Cooper pair box. The purpose of this project was to analyze the effect of charge noise on the fluxonium qubit which, in the past, has never systematically been done before. Charge noise enters the qubit in the form of 1/f noise resulting in interference with the Cooper pairs, two loosely bound electrons, hopping between the superconducting island and reservoir. A program was developed to simulate the qubit's state over time by solving a stochastic differential Schrodinger equation numerically. The program simulated the noise by using its 1/f power spectrum. Looking into the both its wavefunction and density matrix, its dephasing and decoherence rates were determined for different inductive, capacitive, and Josephson energies. Results will be presented.
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Fluxonium superconducting qubits have demonstrated long coherence times and high single- and two-qubit gate fidelities, making them a favorable building block for superconducting quantum processors. We investigate the dominant limitations to fluxonium qubit energy relaxation time T1T_1T1​ using a set of eight planar, aluminum-on-silicon qubits. We find that a circuit-based model for capacitive dielectric loss best captures the frequency dependence of T1T_1T1​, which we analyze within both a two-level and a six-level energy relaxation model. We convert the measured T1T_1T1​ into an effective capacitive quality factor QCeffQ_\mathrm{C}^{\mathrm{eff}}QCeff​ to compare qubits on equal footing, accounting for independently estimated contributions from 1/f1/f1/f flux noise and radiative loss to the control and readout circuitry. We apply this methodology to compare qubits from two fabrication processes: a baseline process and one that applies a fluorine-based wet treatment prior to Josephson junction deposition. We resolve a small improvement of (13.8 ±\pm± 8.4)%)\%)% in the process mean QCeffQ_\mathrm{C}^{\mathrm{eff}}QCeff​, indicating that the fluorine treatment may have reduced loss from the metal-substrate interface, but did not address the primary source of loss in these fluxonium qubits.
The fluxonium qubit has arisen as one of the most promising candidate devices for implementing quantum information in superconducting devices, since it is both insensitive to charge noise (like flux qubits) and insensitive to flux noise (like charge qubits). Here, we investigate the stability of the quantum information to quasiparticle tunneling through a Josephson junction. Microscopically, this dephasing is due to the dependence of the quasiparticle transmission probability on the qubit state. We argue that on a phenomenological level the dephasing mechanism can be understood as originating from heat currents, which are flowing in the device due to possible effective temperature gradients, and their sensitivity to the qubit state. The emerging dephasing time is found to be insensitive to the number of junctions with which the superinductance of the fluxonium qubit is realized. Furthermore, we find that the dephasing time increases quadratically with the shunt-inductance of the circuit which highlights the stability of the device to this dephasing mechanism.
We report superconducting fluxonium qubits with coherence times largely limited by energy relaxation and reproducibly satisfying T 2 > 100 μs (T 2 > 400 μs in one device).Moreover, given the state-of-the-art values of the surface loss tangent and the 1=f flux-noise amplitude, the coherence time can be further improved beyond 1 ms.Our results violate a common viewpoint that the number of Josephson junctions in a superconducting circuit-over 10 2 here-must be minimized for best qubit coherence.We outline how the unique to fluxonium combination of long coherence time and large anharmonicity can benefit both gate-based and adiabatic quantum computing.
Using a fluxonium qubit with in situ tunability of its Josephson energy, we characterize its energy relaxation at different flux biases as well as different Josephson energy values. The relaxation rate at qubit energy values, ranging more than 1 order of magnitude around the thermal energy kBT{k}_{B}TkB​T, can be quantitatively explained by a combination of dielectric loss and 1/f1/f1/f flux noise with a crossover point. The amplitude of the 1/f1/f1/f flux noise is consistent with that extracted from the qubit dephasing measurements at the flux sensitive points. In the dielectric loss dominant regime, the loss is consistent with that arising from the electric dipole interaction with two-level-system (TLS) defects. In particular, by increasing the Josephson energy, thus decreasing the qubit frequency at the flux insensitive spot, we find that the qubit exhibits increasingly weaker coupling to TLS defects, which is desirable for high-fidelity quantum operations. Our work establishes a generic noise model for the design of high coherence fluxonium and future generations of noise resilient superconducting qubits.