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arXiv:2501.05960 · Physical Review X

Dissipating Quartets of Excitations in a Superconducting Circuit

A. Vanselow, B. Beauseigneur, L. Lattier, Marius Villiers, A. Denis, Pascal Morfin, Zaki Leghtas, Philippe Campagne-Ibarcq

Published Dec 10, 2025• 2 citations
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Abstract

Over the past decade, autonomous stabilization of bosonic qubits has emerged as a promising approach for hardware-efficient protection of quantum information. However, applying these techniques to more complex encodings than the Schrödinger cat code requires exquisite control of high-order wave mixing processes. The challenge is to enable specific multiphotonic dissipation channels while avoiding unintended nonlinear interactions. In this work, we leverage a genuine six-wave mixing process enabled by a near Kerr-free Josephson element to enforce dissipation of quartets of excitations in a high-impedance superconducting resonator. Owing to residual nonlinearities stemming from stray inductances in our circuit, this dissipation channel is only effective when the resonator holds a specific number of photons. Applying it to the fourth excited state of the resonator, we show an order-of-magnitude enhancement of the state decay rate while only marginally impacting the relaxation and coherence of lower-energy states. Given that stray inductances could be strongly reduced through simple modifications in circuit design and that our methods can be adapted to activate even higher-order dissipation channels, these results pave the way toward the dynamical stabilization of four-component Schrödinger cat qubits and even more complex bosonic qubits.

DOI
10.1103/bjpc-8xcf

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Over the past decade, autonomous stabilization of bosonic qubits has emerged as a promising approach for hardware-efficient protection of quantum information. However, applying these techniques to more complex encodings than the Schrödinger cat code requires exquisite control of high-order wave mixing processes. The challenge is to enable specific multiphotonic dissipation channels while avoiding unintended nonlinear interactions. In this work, we leverage a genuine six-wave mixing process enabled by a near Kerr-free Josephson element to enforce dissipation of quartets of excitations in a high-impedance superconducting resonator. Owing to residual nonlinearities stemming from stray inductances in our circuit, this dissipation channel is only effective when the resonator holds a specific number of photons. Applying it to the fourth excited state of the resonator, we show an order-of-magnitude enhancement of the state decay rate while only marginally impacting the relaxation and coherence of lower-energy states. Given that stray inductances could be strongly reduced through simple modifications in circuit design and that our methods can be adapted to activate even higher-order dissipation channels, these results pave the way toward the dynamical stabilization of four-component Schrödinger cat qubits and even more complex bosonic qubits.
Bosonic codes encoded in superconducting cavities offer a hardware-efficient path to fault tolerance by exploiting the infinite dimensionality of a single harmonic oscillator. However, the non-linear mixing elements required for autonomous stabilization introduce parasitic self-Kerr interactions that induce deterministic dephasing and limit coherence times. We introduce a control framework based on resonant Kerr-cancellation dynamics using a Superconducting Nonlinear Asymmetric Inductive Element (SNAIL). By tuning the external magnetic flux to a symmetry-protected sweet spot, we eliminate the fourth-order non-linearity while maintaining the third-order mixing required for confinement. We derive an analytical stability threshold χaa<0.1κconf\chi_{aa} < 0.1 \kappa_{conf}χaa​<0.1κconf​ necessary to restore the exponential suppression of bit-flip errors. Analysis of spectroscopic data confirms that operating below this threshold eliminates the phase-space shearing observed in previous experiments. This protocol establishes the physical conditions required to surpass the break-even point in continuous variable quantum information.
Kerr-cat qubits have been experimentally shown to exhibit a large noise bias, with one decay channel suppressed by several orders of magnitude. In superconducting implementations, increasing the microwave drive on the nonlinear oscillator that hosts the Kerr-cat qubit should, in principle, further enhance this bias. Instead, experiments reveal that above a critical drive amplitude the tunneling time, which is the less dominant decay channel, ceases to increase and even decreases. Here, we show that this breakdown arises from the multimode nature of the circuit implementation. Specifically, additional modes, including the buffer mode used to deliver the stabilizing drive and higher modes of the Josephson junction array, can induce multiphoton resonances that sharply degrade Kerr-cat coherence. We uncover this mechanism by retaining the full circuit nonlinearities and treating the strong drive exactly within a Floquet-Markov framework that accounts for quasidegeneracies of the Kerr-cat spectrum. Our results not only provide an explanation for the sudden reduction of the tunneling time, but also demonstrate that the Kerr-cat qubit can be very robust in the presence of a carefully engineered electromagnetic environment. Beyond the Kerr-cat qubit, the tools developed here open the door to study a broad range of drive-induced phenomena in dissipative superconducting circuits, in both resonant and off-resonant driving regimes. Examples include inelastic scattering in circuits with arbitrary anharmonicity and drive strength as well as subharmonically driven devices such as parametric amplifiers and couplers and other protected qubits whose coherence is governed by quasidegeneracies.
We propose a novel approach to generate, protect, and control Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) qubits. It employs a microwave frequency comb parametrically modulating a Josephson circuit to enforce a dissipative dynamics of a high-impedance circuit mode, autonomously stabilizing the finite-energy GKP code. The encoded GKP qubit is robustly protected against all dominant decoherence channels plaguing superconducting circuits but quasiparticle poisoning. In particular, noise from ancillary modes leveraged for dissipation engineering does not propagate at the logical level. In a state-of-the-art experimental setup, we estimate that the encoded qubit lifetime could extend 2 orders of magnitude beyond the break-even point, with substantial margin for improvement through progress in fabrication and control electronics. Qubit initialization, readout, and control via Clifford gates can be performed while maintaining the code stabilization, paving the way toward the assembly of GKP qubits in a fault-tolerant quantum computing architecture.
Quantum computing is a relatively new computing paradigm that leverages entanglement to implement algorithms beyond the reach of classical hardware. Superconducting quantum circuits have emerged as a platform to build quantum processors, with demonstrations of quantum supremacy over classical supercomputers and quantum error correction beyond fault tolerance. However, current noisy devices require significant improvements to unlock the full potential of quantum algorithms.This thesis investigates intrinsic noise channels in superconducting circuits and the design of noise-resilient qubits. By characterizing high-quality superconducting resonators, we identify lossy dielectric materials at the interfaces as the dominant loss mechanism, which we mitigate via targeted surface treatments. Subsequently, we leverage Josephson junction nonlinearity to engineer noise-biased qubits utilizing the Kerr parametric oscillator (KPO). By analyzing the efficiency of strong, far-off-resonance driving to facilitate three- and four-wave mixing processes, we demonstrate high-fidelity operations on Fock, Kerr-cat, and dual-rail qubits. For the Kerr-cat qubit, we introduce a novel 2D architecture that enables strong light-matter coupling with suppressed Purcell decay, yielding millisecond-scale bit-flip lifetimes. Within this same architecture, we demonstrate a longitudinal qubit readout with a 99.6%99.6\%99.6% quantum nondemolition score, alongside a high-fidelity universal single-qubit gate set, all while maintaining bit-flip error suppression. Finally, we exploit the efficient wave-mixing of strongly coupled, far-detuned KPOs to realize a dynamically protected dual-rail qubit exhibiting both erasure bias and high-fidelity single-qubit gates.
Quantum computing crucially relies on maintaining quantum coherence for the duration of a calculation. Bosonic quantum error correction protects this coherence by encoding qubits into superpositions of noise-resilient oscillator states. In the case of the Kerr-cat qubit (KCQ), these states derive their stability from being the quasi-degenerate ground states of an engineered Hamiltonian in a driven nonlinear oscillator. KCQs are experimentally compatible with on-chip architectures and high-fidelity operations, making them promising candidates for a scalable bosonic quantum processor. However, their bit-flip time must increase further to fully leverage these advantages. Here, we present direct evidence that the bit-flip time in a KCQ is limited by leakage out of the qubit manifold and experimentally mitigate this process. We coherently control the leakage population and measure it to be > 9%, twelve times higher than in the undriven system. We then cool this population back into the KCQ manifold with engineered dissipation, identify conditions under which this suppresses bit-flips, and demonstrate increased bit-flip times up to 3.6 milliseconds. By employing both Hamiltonian confinement and engineered dissipation, our experiment combines two paradigms for Schrödinger-cat qubit stabilization. Our results elucidate the interplay between these stabilization processes and indicate a path towards fully realizing the potential of these qubits for quantum error correction.
Out-of-equilibrium driven nonlinear oscillators have attracted interest as a platform for tailoring Floquet Hamiltonian spectra and stabilizing quantum states for quantum information. However, it is usually ignored that the necessary parametric drive can amplify environmental fluctuations limiting applications. In this work, we capture this effect by computing the effective Lindbladian of a Kerr parametric oscillator beyond the rotating wave approximation. We find that the relevant dissipators depend strongly on the nonlinearity and the mean-photon number in the oscillator. In particular, we address recent measurements of the logical lifetime on a Schr\"odinger's-cat qubit stabilized by a parametric drive, thereby providing an explanation for the observed three-order-of-magnitude discrepancy between experimental data and an ordinary Lindblad treatment. Our systematic approach paves the path to treat dissipative effects in Floquet-engineered nonlinear quantum systems.