The ability to fast reset a qubit state is crucial for quantum information processing. However, to actively reset a qubit requires engineering a pathway to interact with a dissipative bath, which often comes at the cost of reduced qubit protection from the environment. Here, we present a multipurpose architecture that enables fast reset and protection of superconducting qubits during control and readout. In our design, two on-chip diplexers are connected by two transmission lines. The high-pass branch provides a flat passband for convenient allocation of readout resonators above the qubit frequencies, which is preferred for reducing measurement-induced state transitions. In the low-pass branch, we leverage a standing-wave mode below the maximum qubit frequency for a rapid reset. The qubits are located in the common stopband to inhibit dissipation during coherent operations. We demonstrate resetting a transmon qubit from its first excited state to the ground state in 100 ns, achieving a residual population of 2.7%. The reset time may be further shortened to 27 ns by exploiting the coherent population inversion effect. We further extend the technique to resetting the qubit from its second excited state. Our approach promises scalable implementation of fast reset and qubit protection during control and readout, adding to the toolbox of dissipation engineering.
The ability to fast reset a qubit state is crucial for quantum information processing. However, to actively reset a qubit requires engineering a pathway to interact with a dissipative bath, which often comes at the cost of reduced qubit protection from the environment. Here, we present a multipurpose architecture that enables fast reset and protection of superconducting qubits during control and readout. In our design, two on-chip diplexers are connected by two transmission lines. The high-pass branch provides a flat passband for convenient allocation of readout resonators above the qubit frequencies, which is preferred for reducing measurement-induced state transitions. In the low-pass branch, we leverage a standing-wave mode below the maximum qubit frequency for a rapid reset. The qubits are located in the common stopband to inhibit dissipation during coherent operations. We demonstrate resetting a transmon qubit from its first excited state to the ground state in 100 ns, achieving a residual population of 2.7%. The reset time may be further shortened to 27 ns by exploiting the coherent population inversion effect. We further extend the technique to resetting the qubit from its second excited state. Our approach promises scalable implementation of fast reset and qubit protection during control and readout, adding to the toolbox of dissipation engineering.
For larger-scale quantum information processing, qubit reset plays an important role, as the coherent times for qubits are limited. However, previous schemes require either long reset times or a complex pulse calibration technique, leading to low efficiency in qubit reset. Here, we propose a fast and simple reset protocol for superconducting transmon qubits based on the coupler-coupled qubits architecture. In this setup, a mixing pulse is used to transfer the qubit excitation to the combined excitation of a low-qulity coupler and readout resonator, which will quickly decay to their respectively ground states, leading to efficient qubit reset to the ground state. Our numerical results show that the residual population of the qubit’s excited state can be suppressed to 0.04% within 28 ns; the reset time will be 283 ns if photon depletion of the readout resonator is required. Thus, our protocol provides a promising way for the high-efficiency superconducting qubit reset.
Rapid reset and readout of qubit states are essential for quantum error correction, yet accelerating these operations through stronger coupling to a dissipative environment inevitably increases qubit decay via the Purcell effect. Here we present a broadband Purcell filter that decouples the reset and readout paths, enabling both operations to be independently optimized without compromising qubit coherence. The filter employs two engineered notches - an intrinsic notch and a bandstop notch - to provide broadband Purcell protection, together with an additional reset stub that creates a reset mode below the protected band. To enable fast reset while suppressing filter-mediated interactions between qubits, we couple each qubit to a dedicated reset resonator. We experimentally demonstrate Purcell-limited relaxation times exceeding 1 ms across a 1.2 GHz bandwidth, simultaneously with 500 ns readout without a Josephson parametric amplifier and 100 ns reset with 99.6% efficiency. The reset resonator is designed with a deliberate kappa-chi mismatch, which suppresses photon-shot-noise-induced dephasing by a factor of 70 compared to the readout resonator. Our work provides a scalable hardware solution that resolves the traditional trade-off between fast qubit operations and qubit protection, advancing the prospects for fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Efficient qubit reset and leakage reduction are essential for scalable superconducting quantum computing, particularly in the context of quantum error correction. However, such operations often require additional on-chip components. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a hardware-efficient approach to qubit reset and readout using a multi-mode Purcell filter in a superconducting quantum circuit. We exploit the inherent multi-mode structure of a coplanar waveguide resonator, using its fundamental and second-order modes for qubit reset and readout, respectively, thereby avoiding additional components. Implemented in a flip-chip architecture, our device achieves unconditional reset with residual excitation below 1\% in 220 ns, and a leakage reduction unit that selectively resets the second excited state within 62 ns with a residual ∣f⟩ population of 6.1\%, accounting for the readout error. Despite the qubits being directly coupled to the filter in our configuration, the measured relaxation times are not degraded owing to intrinsic Purcell protection provided by an auxiliary mode. To our knowledge, this is the first experimental trial that exploits different-order modes of a microwave resonator for distinct qubit operations, representing a new direction toward scalable, hardware-efficient quantum processor design.
Rapid and accurate initialization of qubits, known as reset, is a crucial building block for various tasks in quantum information processing, such as quantum error correction and estimation of the statistics of noisy quantum devices with many qubits. We demonstrate unconditional reset of a frequency-tunable transmon qubit that simultaneously resets multiple excited states using a metamaterial waveguide engineered to provide a cold bath over a wide spectral range, while providing strong protection against Purcell decay of the qubit. We report a reset error below 0.13% (0.16%) when prepared in the first (second) excited state of the transmon within 88 ns. In addition, through the sharp roll-off in the density of states of the metamaterial waveguide, we implement a leakage-reduction unit that selectively resets the transmon’s second excited state to 0.285(3)% residual population within 44 ns while acting trivially in the computational subspace as an identity operation that preserves encoded information with an infidelity of 0.72(1)%.
Qubit initialization is a critical task in quantum computation and communication. Extensive efforts have been made to achieve this with high speed, efficiency and scalability. However, previous approaches have either been measurement-based and required fast feedback, suffered from crosstalk or required sophisticated calibration. Here, we report a fast and high-fidelity reset scheme, avoiding the issues above without any additional chip architecture. By modulating the flux through a transmon qubit, we realize a swap between the qubit and its readout resonator that suppresses the excited state population to 0.08% ± 0.08% within 34 ns (284 ns if photon depletion of the resonator is required). Furthermore, our approach (i) can achieve effective second excited state depletion, (ii) has negligible effects on neighboring qubits, and (iii) offers a way to entangle the qubit with an itinerant single photon, useful in quantum communication applications.
The realization of fault-tolerant quantum computing requires the execution of quantum error-correction (QEC) schemes, to mitigate the fragile nature of qubits. In this context, to ensure the success of QEC, a protocol capable of implementing both qubit reset and leakage reduction is highly desirable together with the ability to perform fast and high-fidelity readout of the qubit s’ quantum states. In this thesis, we tackle both these challenges in an architecture consisting of fixed-frequency transmon qubits pair-wise coupled via tunable couplers. We demonstrate a readout scheme that combines two microwave techniques: applying a shelving technique to the qubits that reduces the contribution of decay error during readout, and a two-tone excitation of the readout resonators to distinguish among qubits’ populations in higher energy levels. We perform single-shot frequency-multiplexed qubit readout, with a 140 ns readout time, and demonstrate 99.5% assignment fidelity for two-state readout and 96.9% for three-state readout - without using a quantum-limited amplifier. We also demonstrate a reset scheme that is fast, unconditional, and achieves fidelities well above 99%, thus enabling fixed-frequency qubit architectures as future implementations of fault-tolerant quantum computers. Our reset protocol uses the tunable couplers to transfer any undesired qubits’ excitation to the readout resonators of the qubits, from which this excitation decays into the feedline. In total, the combination of qubit reset, leakage reduction, and coupler reset takes only 83 ns to complete. This reset protocol also provides a means to both reduce QEC cycle runtime and improve algorithmic fidelity on quantum processors.