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arXiv:2502.18322

Demolition measurement protocol for transmon qubits

Mishra, Ashutosh, Frank K. Wilhelm, Shai Machnes

Published Feb 25, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The process of measuring a qubit and re-initializing it to the ground state practically lead to long qubit idle times between re-runs of experiments on a superconducting quantum computer. Here, we propose a protocol for a \textit{demolition measurement} of a transmon qubit that integrates qubit readout with the reset process to minimize qubit idle time. We present a three-staged implementation of this protocol, involving a combined qubit readout and resonator reset scheme that unconditionally resets the resonator at the end of the readout; a leakage removal scheme that can be integrated with the measurement stage; and an unconditional qubit reset. We demonstrate that this protocol could be implemented in $1 \, μ$s with greater than $95 \, \%$ reset fidelity and a $99 \, \%$ readout fidelity without any hardware overhead beyond those commonly used. This provides at least a 50x speed up compared to the passive decay of the qubit, thereby significantly increasing the data-acquisition rate.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2502.18322

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The process of measuring a qubit and re-initializing it to the ground state practically lead to long qubit idle times between re-runs of experiments on a superconducting quantum computer. Here, we propose a protocol for a \textit{demolition measurement} of a transmon qubit that integrates qubit readout with the reset process to minimize qubit idle time. We present a three-staged implementation of this protocol, involving a combined qubit readout and resonator reset scheme that unconditionally resets the resonator at the end of the readout; a leakage removal scheme that can be integrated with the measurement stage; and an unconditional qubit reset. We demonstrate that this protocol could be implemented in 1 μ1 \, μ1μs with greater than 95 %95 \, \%95% reset fidelity and a 99 %99 \, \%99% readout fidelity without any hardware overhead beyond those commonly used. This provides at least a 50x speed up compared to the passive decay of the qubit, thereby significantly increasing the data-acquisition rate.
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.
The unconditional and fast reset of fixed-frequency superconducting qubits is crucial for the operation of near-term quantum computers at elevated trigger rates. Many reset schemes are either conditional (depend on the qubit's state) or require flux tunability. This study presents an all-microwave pulsed reset sequence that uses the readout resonator to unconditionally empty a fixed-frequency transmon qubit, and that also reduces the qubit thermal population. This method could be used to increase the repetition rate of a superconducting quantum computer running, for example, variational eigensolvers requiring many measurements.
Fast, high-fidelity qubit initialization is a key primitive for scalable quantum information processing, but conventional reset protocols either require long relaxation times or discard information contained in continuous measurement records. We demonstrate an adaptive measurement-based reset protocol for superconducting qubits that uses Bayesian inference to update the qubit-state estimate after each readout and dynamically adjust the feedback threshold. Unlike fixed-threshold or repeat-until-success (RUS) protocols, the method utilizes the full analog measurement history, enabling the reset decision to become progressively more conservative as confidence in ground-state preparation increases. Implemented with real-time FPGA-based feedback on a dispersively readout transmon qubit, the protocol achieves a ground-state initialization fidelity of 99.44±0.04%99.44\pm0.04\%99.44±0.04% after a small number of reset rounds. We further compare adaptive reset with RUS strategies in multi-qubit experiments and show that adaptive thresholding provides deterministic reset duration while maintaining a five-qubit simultaneous-reset fidelity of 98.78±0.19%98.78 \pm 0.19\%98.78±0.19%. These results establish Bayesian adaptive thresholding as a practical and scalable route to fast qubit reset in superconducting quantum processors.
Quantum computation will rely on quantum error correction to counteract decoherence. Successfully implementing an error correction protocol requires the fidelity of qubit operations to be well-above error correction thresholds. In superconducting quantum computers, measurement of the qubit state remains the lowest-fidelity operation. For the transmon, a prototypical superconducting qubit, measurement is carried out by scattering a microwave tone off the qubit. Conventionally, the frequency of this tone is of the same order as the transmon frequency. The measurement fidelity in this approach is limited by multi-excitation resonances in the transmon spectrum which are activated at high readout power. These resonances excite the qubit outside of the computational basis, violating the desired quantum non-demolition character of the measurement. Here, we find that strongly detuning the readout frequency from that of the transmon exponentially suppresses the strength of spurious multi-excitation resonances. By increasing the readout frequency up to twelve times the transmon frequency, we achieve a quantum non-demolition measurement fidelity of 99.93% with a residual probability of leakage to non-computational states of only 0.02%.
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.
Fast, precise, and quantum-non-demolition (QND) readout of superconducting qubits is a fundamental component of high-fidelity quantum sensing and computation. Conventional approaches typically operate in the dispersive regime, where the qubit-resonator coupling ggg is weak compared to the detuning ΔΔΔ. While exhibiting good QND properties, the readout rate is limited to ∼g2N/Δ≪g\sim g^2\sqrt{N}/Δ\ll g∼g2N​/Δ≪g, where NNN is the number of photons in the resonator. QND readout in the nondispersive regime, where the readout rate reaches its full potential ∼g\sim g∼g, relies on parameter sweeps that may encounter resonances, leading to measurement-induced state transitions (MIST). In this work, we study a nondispersive readout protocol that replaces these sweeps by sudden quenches of the coupling constant, using a resonator that is preloaded with photons. We call this protocol bang-bang readout, and show that it realizes single-shot projective measurements. The fidelity and QNDness of the qubit post-measurement are remarkably high, with an error that decreases like 1/N1/N1/N. We show that the protocol can also be implemented without preloading the resonator by instead strongly driving the qubit, e.g., with a classical flux drive.