Ionizing radiation impacts create bursts of quasiparticle density in superconducting qubits. These bursts temporarily degrade qubit coherence, which can be detrimental for quantum error correction. Here, we experimentally resolve quasiparticle bursts in 3D gap-engineered transmon qubits by continuously monitoring qubit transitions. Gap engineering allows us to reduce the burst detection rate by a factor of 5. This reduction falls 4 orders of magnitude short of that expected if the quasiparticles were to quickly thermalize to the cryostat temperature. We associate the limited effect of gap engineering with the slow thermalization of the phonons in our chips after the burst.
Ionizing radiation impacts create bursts of quasiparticle density in superconducting qubits. These bursts temporarily degrade qubit coherence, which can be detrimental for quantum error correction. Here, we experimentally resolve quasiparticle bursts in 3D gap-engineered transmon qubits by continuously monitoring qubit transitions. Gap engineering allows us to reduce the burst detection rate by a factor of 5. This reduction falls 4 orders of magnitude short of that expected if the quasiparticles were to quickly thermalize to the cryostat temperature. We associate the limited effect of gap engineering with the slow thermalization of the phonons in our chips after the burst.
Quantum error correction (QEC) provides a practical path to fault-tolerant quantum computing through scaling to large qubit numbers, assuming that physical errors are sufficiently uncorrelated in time and space. In superconducting qubit arrays, high-energy impact events can produce correlated errors, violating this key assumption. Following such an event, phonons with energy above the superconducting gap propagate throughout the device substrate, which in turn generate a temporary surge in quasiparticle (QP) density throughout the array. When these QPs tunnel across the qubits' Josephson junctions, they induce correlated errors. Engineering different superconducting gaps across the qubit's Josephson junctions provides a method to resist this form of QP tunneling. By fabricating all-aluminum transmon qubits with both strong and weak gap engineering on the same substrate, we observe starkly different responses during high-energy impact events. Strongly gap engineered qubits do not show any degradation in T_{1} during impact events, while weakly gap engineered qubits show events of correlated degradation in T_{1}. We also show that strongly gap engineered qubits are robust to QP poisoning from increasing optical illumination intensity, whereas weakly gap engineered qubits display rapid degradation in coherence. Based on these results, gap engineering mitigates the threat of high-energy impacts to QEC in superconducting qubit arrays.
One of the roadblocks toward the implementation of a fault-tolerant superconducting quantum processor is impacts of ionizing radiation with the qubit substrate. Such impacts temporarily elevate the density of quasiparticles (QPs) across the device, leading to correlated qubit error bursts. The most damaging errors, T 1 errors, stem from QP tunneling across the qubit Josephson junctions (JJs). Recently, we demonstrated [M. McEwen, K. Miao, , ] that this type of error can be strongly suppressed by engineering the profile of superconducting gap at the JJs in a way that prevents QP tunneling. In this work, we identify a new type of impact-induced correlated error that persists in the presence of gap engineering. We observe that impacts shift the frequencies of the affected qubits, and thus lead to correlated phase errors. The frequency shifts are systematically negative, reach values up to 3 MHz, and last for ∼ 1 ms . We provide evidence that the shifts originate from QP-qubit interactions in the JJ region. Further, we demonstrate that the shift-induced phase errors can be detrimental to the performance of quantum error correction protocols.
Superconducting quantum circuits underpin large-scale quantum processors and are increasingly interfaced with optical systems, yet they are vulnerable to quasiparticle poisoning from high-energy radiation and optical fields. Gap engineering of Josephson junctions suppresses quasiparticle-induced relaxation, but quasiparticles near the junction can still shift the qubit frequency and cause phase errors. Here, we extend gap engineering beyond the junction using a flux-tunable transmon with a gold-on-niobium ground plane and island and strongly gap-engineered aluminum junctions designed to keep quasiparticles away from the junction leads. Compared with an all-aluminum transmon with nominally identical junctions, we demonstrate that the niobium device withstands more than an order of magnitude higher near-infrared optical power before excess relaxation appears. The Nb transmon shows no resolvable quasiparticle-induced frequency shift over the same power range. At the same time, we observe that dephasing and state-preparation-and-measurement infidelity increase with optical power even while relaxation remains protected. These results suggest that engineering the quasiparticle energy landscape beyond the junction can substantially increase qubit resilience, not only to radiation-induced error bursts, but also to nearby optical fields.
Quantum error correction will be an essential ingredient in realizing fault-tolerant quantum computing. However, most correction schemes rely on the assumption that errors are sufficiently uncorrelated in space and time. In superconducting qubits, this assumption is drastically violated in the presence of ionizing radiation, which creates bursts of high-energy phonons in the substrate. These phonons can break Cooper pairs in the superconductor and, thus, create quasiparticles over large areas, consequently reducing qubit coherence across the quantum device in a correlated fashion. A potential mitigation technique is to place large volumes of normal or superconducting metal on the device, capable of reducing the phonon energy to below the superconducting gap of the qubits. To investigate the effectiveness of this method, we fabricate a quantum device with four nominally identical nanowire-based transmon qubits. On the device, half of the niobium-titanium-nitride ground plane is replaced with aluminum (Al), which has a significantly lower superconducting gap. We deterministically inject high-energy phonons into the substrate by voltage biasing a galvanically isolated Josephson junction. In the presence of the small-gap material, we find a factor of 2--5 less degradation in the injection-dependent qubit lifetimes and observe that the undesired excited qubit state population is mitigated by a similar factor. We furthermore turn the Al normal with a magnetic field, finding no change in the phonon protection. This suggests that the efficacy of the protection in our device is not limited by the size of the superconducting gap in the Al ground plane. Our results provide a promising foundation for protecting superconducting-qubit processors against correlated errors from ionizing radiation.
We investigate qubit error bursts in 5- and 7-transmon processors of similar design, fabrication and packaging, but with different types of qubit Josephson junctions. Measurements for each are performed in two refrigerators to discern device-specific from refrigerator-dependent characteristics. The duration and rate of bursts are device specific but within the range of prior experiments and consistent with ionizing radiation. We observe two unforeseen signatures specifically in the processor with Dolan junctions. First, increasing the rate of π pulsing in the detection scheme shortens the recovery time to equilibrium, which is explained by a quasiparticle pumping mechanism. The second signature is an anomalous time dependence in the burst rate: a surge happens days or weeks after cooldown, followed by a strong suppression that persists until thermal cycling.
Impacts from high-energy particles cause correlated errors in superconducting qubits by increasing the quasiparticle density in the vicinity of the Josephson junctions (JJs). Such errors are particularly harmful as they cannot be easily remedied via conventional error correcting codes. Recent experiments reduced correlated errors by making the difference in superconducting gap energy across the JJ larger than the qubit transition energy. In this work, we assess gap engineering near the JJ (δΔJJ) and the capacitor/ground-plane (δΔM1) by exposing arrays of transmon qubits to two sources of radiation. For α-particles from an 241Am source, we observe T1 errors correlated in space and time, supporting a hypothesis that hadronic cosmic rays are a major contributor to the 10−10 error floor observed in Ref. 1. For electrons from a pulsed linear accelerator, we observe temporally correlated T1 and T2 errors, this measurement is insensitive to spatial correlations. We observe that the severity of correlated T1 errors is reduced for qubit arrays with a greater degree of gap engineering at the JJ. For both T1 and T2 errors, the recovery time is hastened by an increased δΔM1, which we attribute to the trapping of quasiparticles into the capacitor/ground-plane. We construct a model of quasiparticle dynamics that qualitatively agrees with our observations. This work reinforces the multifaceted influence of radiation on superconducting qubits and provides strategies for improving radiation resilience.