Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2206.06203 · Physical Review Research

Microwave-activated gates between a fluxonium and a transmon qubit

Alessandro Ciani, Boris Varbanov, N. Jolly, Christian Kraglund Andersen, Barbara M. Terhal

Published Nov 22, 2022• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We propose and analyze two types of microwave-activated gates between a fluxonium and a transmon qubit, namely a cross-resonance (CR) and a CPHASE gate. The large frequency difference between a transmon and a fluxonium makes the realization of a two-qubit gate challenging. For a medium-frequency fluxonium qubit, the transmon-fluxonium system allows for a cross-resonance effect mediated by the higher levels of the fluxonium over a wide range of transmon frequencies. This allows one to realize the cross-resonance gate by driving the fluxonium at the transmon frequency, mitigating typical problems of the cross-resonance gate in transmon-transmon chips related to frequency targeting and residual $ZZ$ coupling. However, when the fundamental frequency of the fluxonium enters the low-frequency regime below $100\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{MHz}$, the cross-resonance effect decreases leading to long gate times. For this range of parameters, a fast microwave CPHASE gate can be implemented using the higher levels of the fluxonium. In both cases, we perform numerical simulations of the gate showing that a gate fidelity above $99%$ can be obtained with gate times between 100 and $300\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ns}$. Next to a detailed gate analysis, we perform a study of chip yield for a surface code lattice of fluxonia and transmons interacting via the proposed cross-resonance gate. We find a much better yield as compared to a transmon-only architecture with the cross-resonance gate as native two-qubit gate.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.4.043127

Related papers

Microwave-activated gates between a fluxonium and a transmon qubit

Alessandro Ciani, Boris Varbanov, N. Jolly +2 more

We propose and analyze two types of microwave-activated gates between a fluxonium and a transmon qubit, namely a cross-resonance (CR) and a CPHASE gate. The large frequency difference between a transmon and a fluxonium makes the realization of a two-qubit gate challenging. For a medium-frequency fluxonium qubit, the transmon-fluxonium system allows for a cross-resonance effect mediated by the higher levels of the fluxonium over a wide range of transmon frequencies. This allows one to realize the cross-resonance gate by driving the fluxonium at the transmon frequency, mitigating typical problems of the cross-resonance gate in transmon-transmon chips related to frequency targeting and residual ZZ coupling. However, when the fundamental frequency of the fluxonium enters the low-frequency regime below 100 MHz, the cross-resonance effect decreases leading to long gate times. For this range of parameters, a fast microwave CPHASE gate can be implemented using the higher levels of the fluxonium. In both cases, we perform numerical simulations of the gate showing that a gate fidelity above 99% can be obtained with gate times between 100 and 300 ns. Next to a detailed gate analysis, we perform a study of chip yield for a surface code lattice of fluxonia and transmons interacting via the proposed cross-resonance gate. We find a much better yield as compared to a transmon-only architecture with the cross-resonance gate as native two-qubit gate.

•Jan 1, 2022•0 citations

Generation of cross-cross resonance gates with two fluxonium qubits

Xinpeng 鑫鹏 Chen 陈, Ze-Liang Xiang

Abstract The cross-cross resonance (CCR) gate is an extension of the cross-resonance (CR) gate that has been theoretically implemented with transmon qubits. However, the weak anharmonicity of transmon qubits leads to decoherence and leakage errors, which reduce the fidelity of the gate operation. In this work, we propose employing fluxonium qubits to implement the CCR gate. With similar drive amplitudes, our scheme can achieve the required stronger ZX and XZ interactions compared to a transmon qubit system, resulting in shorter gate times. By combining the CCR gate with specific single-qubit gates, a iSWAP gate is realized, thereby enabling the construction of the iSWAP and SWAP gates. Moreover, through parameter optimization, these gates built on fluxonium qubits exhibit a significant reduction in operation time while simultaneously achieving higher fidelity. Our results provide valuable insights into achieving fast, low-error-rate swapping operations in superconducting circuits.

Chinese Physics B•Oct 16, 2025•0 citations

Fast Logic with Slow Qubits: Microwave-Activated Controlled-Z Gate on Low-Frequency Fluxoniums

Quentin Ficheux, Long B. Nguyen, Aaron Somoroff +4 more

We demonstrate a controlled-Z gate between capacitively coupled fluxonium qubits with transition frequencies $72.3~\textrm{MHz}$ and $136.3~\textrm{MHz}$. The gate is activated by a $61.6~\textrm{ns}$ long pulse at the frequency between non-computational transitions $|10\rangle - |20\rangle$ and $|11\rangle - |21\rangle$, during which the qubits complete only $4$ and $8$ Larmor periods, respectively. The measured gate error of $(8\pm1)\times 10^{-3}$ is limited by decoherence in the non-computational subspace, which will likely improve in the next generation devices. Although our qubits are about fifty times slower than transmons, the two-qubit gate is faster than microwave-activated gates on transmons, and the gate error is on par with the lowest reported. Architectural advantages of low-frequency fluxoniums include long qubit coherence time, weak hybridization in the computational subspace, suppressed residual $ZZ$-coupling rate (here $46~\mathrm{kHz}$), and absence of either excessive parameter matching or complex pulse shaping requirements.

arXiv:2011.02634•Physical Review X•May 3, 2021•68 citations

Exploration of Fluxonium Parameters for Capacitive Cross-Resonance Gates

Eugene Y. Huang, Christian Kraglund Andersen

We study the cross-resonance effect in capacitively-coupled fluxonium qubits and devise a simple formula for their maximum ZX interaction strength. By going beyond the perturbative regime, we find that a CNOT gate can generally be realized in under 200 ns with residual ZZ limited to 50 kHz, for fluxonium qubits with frequencies below 1 GHz. Our analysis relies on a semi-analytical method: we first numerically diagonalize the Floquet Hamiltonian of the strongly-driven control qubit and then perturbatively incorporate the weak qubit-qubit coupling to obtain an effective Hamiltonian. We also derive frequency collision windows around harmful control-target and control-spectator transitions. For large fluxonium devices, we predict a collision-free yield that is considerably less sensitive to junction variability compared to transmons in the same layout. These results support the viability of an all-fluxonium cross-resonance architecture with only capacitive couplings.

quant-pharXiv:2603.17936•Mar 19, 2026•0 citations

High-Fidelity, Frequency-Flexible Two-Qubit Fluxonium Gates with a Transmon Coupler

Leon Ding, Max Hays, Youngkyu Sung +16 more

We propose and demonstrate an architecture for fluxonium-fluxonium two-qubit gates mediated by transmon couplers (FTF, for fluxonium-transmon-fluxonium).Relative to architectures that exclusively rely on a direct coupling between fluxonium qubits, FTF enables stronger couplings for gates using noncomputational states while simultaneously suppressing the static controlled-phase entangling rate (ZZ) down to kilohertz levels, all without requiring strict parameter matching.Here, we implement FTF with a flux-tunable transmon coupler and demonstrate a microwave-activated controlled-Z (CZ) gate whose operation frequency can be tuned over a 2-GHz range, adding frequency allocation freedom for FTFs in larger systems.Across this range, state-of-the-art CZ gate fidelities are observed over many bias points and reproduced across the two devices characterized in this work.After optimizing both the operation frequency and the gate duration, we achieve peak CZ fidelities in the 99.85%-99.9%range.Finally, we implement model-free reinforcement learning of the pulse parameters to boost the mean gate fidelity up to 99.922% Æ 0.009%, averaged over roughly an hour between scheduled training runs.Beyond the microwave-activated CZ gate we present here, FTF can be applied to a variety of other fluxonium gate schemes to improve gate fidelities and passively reduce unwanted ZZ interactions.

arXiv:2304.06087•Physical Review X•Sep 25, 2023•150 citations

Fast microwave-driven two-qubit gates between fluxonium qubits with a transmon coupler

Siddharth Singh, Eugene Y. Huang, Jinlun Hu +6 more

Two qubit gates constitute fundamental building blocks in the realization of large-scale quantum devices. Using superconducting circuits, two-qubit gates have previously been implemented in different ways with each method aiming to maximize gate fidelity. Another important goal of a new gate scheme is to minimize the complexity of gate calibration. In this work, we demonstrate a high-fidelity two-qubit gate between two fluxonium qubits enabled by an intermediate capacitively coupled transmon. The coupling strengths between the qubits and the coupler are designed to minimize residual crosstalk while still allowing for fast gate operations. The gate is based on frequency selectively exciting the coupler using a microwave drive to complete a 2$π$ rotation, conditional on the state of the fluxonium qubits. When successful, this drive scheme implements a conditional phase gate. Using analytically derived pulse shapes, we minimize unwanted excitations of the coupler and obtain gate errors of $10^{-2}$ for gate times below 60~ns. At longer durations, our gate is limited by relaxation of the coupler. Our results show how carefully designed control pulses can speed up frequency selective entangling gates.

arXiv:2504.13718•Physical Review Applied•Oct 28, 2025•5 citations
We propose and analyze two types of microwave-activated gates between a fluxonium and a transmon qubit, namely a cross-resonance (CR) and a CPHASE gate. The large frequency difference between a transmon and a fluxonium makes the realization of a two-qubit gate challenging. For a medium-frequency fluxonium qubit, the transmon-fluxonium system allows for a cross-resonance effect mediated by the higher levels of the fluxonium over a wide range of transmon frequencies. This allows one to realize the cross-resonance gate by driving the fluxonium at the transmon frequency, mitigating typical problems of the cross-resonance gate in transmon-transmon chips related to frequency targeting and residual ZZZZZZ coupling. However, when the fundamental frequency of the fluxonium enters the low-frequency regime below 100MHz100\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{MHz}100MHz, the cross-resonance effect decreases leading to long gate times. For this range of parameters, a fast microwave CPHASE gate can be implemented using the higher levels of the fluxonium. In both cases, we perform numerical simulations of the gate showing that a gate fidelity above 9999%99 can be obtained with gate times between 100 and 300ns300\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ns}300ns. Next to a detailed gate analysis, we perform a study of chip yield for a surface code lattice of fluxonia and transmons interacting via the proposed cross-resonance gate. We find a much better yield as compared to a transmon-only architecture with the cross-resonance gate as native two-qubit gate.
We propose and analyze two types of microwave-activated gates between a fluxonium and a transmon qubit, namely a cross-resonance (CR) and a CPHASE gate. The large frequency difference between a transmon and a fluxonium makes the realization of a two-qubit gate challenging. For a medium-frequency fluxonium qubit, the transmon-fluxonium system allows for a cross-resonance effect mediated by the higher levels of the fluxonium over a wide range of transmon frequencies. This allows one to realize the cross-resonance gate by driving the fluxonium at the transmon frequency, mitigating typical problems of the cross-resonance gate in transmon-transmon chips related to frequency targeting and residual ZZ coupling. However, when the fundamental frequency of the fluxonium enters the low-frequency regime below 100 MHz, the cross-resonance effect decreases leading to long gate times. For this range of parameters, a fast microwave CPHASE gate can be implemented using the higher levels of the fluxonium. In both cases, we perform numerical simulations of the gate showing that a gate fidelity above 99% can be obtained with gate times between 100 and 300 ns. Next to a detailed gate analysis, we perform a study of chip yield for a surface code lattice of fluxonia and transmons interacting via the proposed cross-resonance gate. We find a much better yield as compared to a transmon-only architecture with the cross-resonance gate as native two-qubit gate.
Abstract The cross-cross resonance (CCR) gate is an extension of the cross-resonance (CR) gate that has been theoretically implemented with transmon qubits. However, the weak anharmonicity of transmon qubits leads to decoherence and leakage errors, which reduce the fidelity of the gate operation. In this work, we propose employing fluxonium qubits to implement the CCR gate. With similar drive amplitudes, our scheme can achieve the required stronger ZX and XZ interactions compared to a transmon qubit system, resulting in shorter gate times. By combining the CCR gate with specific single-qubit gates, a iSWAP gate is realized, thereby enabling the construction of the iSWAP and SWAP gates. Moreover, through parameter optimization, these gates built on fluxonium qubits exhibit a significant reduction in operation time while simultaneously achieving higher fidelity. Our results provide valuable insights into achieving fast, low-error-rate swapping operations in superconducting circuits.
We demonstrate a controlled-Z gate between capacitively coupled fluxonium qubits with transition frequencies 72.3 MHz72.3~\textrm{MHz}72.3 MHz and 136.3 MHz136.3~\textrm{MHz}136.3 MHz. The gate is activated by a 61.6 ns61.6~\textrm{ns}61.6 ns long pulse at the frequency between non-computational transitions ∣10⟩−∣20⟩|10\rangle - |20\rangle∣10⟩−∣20⟩ and ∣11⟩−∣21⟩|11\rangle - |21\rangle∣11⟩−∣21⟩, during which the qubits complete only 444 and 888 Larmor periods, respectively. The measured gate error of (8±1)×10−3(8\pm1)\times 10^{-3}(8±1)×10−3 is limited by decoherence in the non-computational subspace, which will likely improve in the next generation devices. Although our qubits are about fifty times slower than transmons, the two-qubit gate is faster than microwave-activated gates on transmons, and the gate error is on par with the lowest reported. Architectural advantages of low-frequency fluxoniums include long qubit coherence time, weak hybridization in the computational subspace, suppressed residual ZZZZZZ-coupling rate (here 46 kHz46~\mathrm{kHz}46 kHz), and absence of either excessive parameter matching or complex pulse shaping requirements.
We study the cross-resonance effect in capacitively-coupled fluxonium qubits and devise a simple formula for their maximum ZX interaction strength. By going beyond the perturbative regime, we find that a CNOT gate can generally be realized in under 200 ns with residual ZZ limited to 50 kHz, for fluxonium qubits with frequencies below 1 GHz. Our analysis relies on a semi-analytical method: we first numerically diagonalize the Floquet Hamiltonian of the strongly-driven control qubit and then perturbatively incorporate the weak qubit-qubit coupling to obtain an effective Hamiltonian. We also derive frequency collision windows around harmful control-target and control-spectator transitions. For large fluxonium devices, we predict a collision-free yield that is considerably less sensitive to junction variability compared to transmons in the same layout. These results support the viability of an all-fluxonium cross-resonance architecture with only capacitive couplings.
We propose and demonstrate an architecture for fluxonium-fluxonium two-qubit gates mediated by transmon couplers (FTF, for fluxonium-transmon-fluxonium).Relative to architectures that exclusively rely on a direct coupling between fluxonium qubits, FTF enables stronger couplings for gates using noncomputational states while simultaneously suppressing the static controlled-phase entangling rate (ZZ) down to kilohertz levels, all without requiring strict parameter matching.Here, we implement FTF with a flux-tunable transmon coupler and demonstrate a microwave-activated controlled-Z (CZ) gate whose operation frequency can be tuned over a 2-GHz range, adding frequency allocation freedom for FTFs in larger systems.Across this range, state-of-the-art CZ gate fidelities are observed over many bias points and reproduced across the two devices characterized in this work.After optimizing both the operation frequency and the gate duration, we achieve peak CZ fidelities in the 99.85%-99.9%range.Finally, we implement model-free reinforcement learning of the pulse parameters to boost the mean gate fidelity up to 99.922% Æ 0.009%, averaged over roughly an hour between scheduled training runs.Beyond the microwave-activated CZ gate we present here, FTF can be applied to a variety of other fluxonium gate schemes to improve gate fidelities and passively reduce unwanted ZZ interactions.
Two qubit gates constitute fundamental building blocks in the realization of large-scale quantum devices. Using superconducting circuits, two-qubit gates have previously been implemented in different ways with each method aiming to maximize gate fidelity. Another important goal of a new gate scheme is to minimize the complexity of gate calibration. In this work, we demonstrate a high-fidelity two-qubit gate between two fluxonium qubits enabled by an intermediate capacitively coupled transmon. The coupling strengths between the qubits and the coupler are designed to minimize residual crosstalk while still allowing for fast gate operations. The gate is based on frequency selectively exciting the coupler using a microwave drive to complete a 2πππ rotation, conditional on the state of the fluxonium qubits. When successful, this drive scheme implements a conditional phase gate. Using analytically derived pulse shapes, we minimize unwanted excitations of the coupler and obtain gate errors of 10−210^{-2}10−2 for gate times below 60~ns. At longer durations, our gate is limited by relaxation of the coupler. Our results show how carefully designed control pulses can speed up frequency selective entangling gates.