Analytically solvable models -- particularly the Landau-Majorana-Stückelberg-Zener (LMSZ) and Allen-Eberly-Hioe (AEH) models -- underpin many quantum-gate implementations and population-transfer protocols. However, their canonical pulse shapes are incompatible with modern leakage-suppression techniques and some systems. Most notably, the constant Rabi envelope of the LMSZ pulse prevents many leakage-suppression approaches, which require smoothness. We address both limitations by developing the concept of isoprobability twin models: distinct pairs of Rabi frequency $Ω(t)$ and detuning $Δ(t)$ that yield identical post-pulse transition probabilities based on the Delos-Thorson transformation. In this work, we formalise the method by experimentally demonstrating the equivalence of multiple LMSZ and AEH twin models on IBM's ibm_kyiv processor. Finally, we show a staggering leakage reduction by more than 3 orders of magnitude using a custom DRAG implementation of a cosine LMSZ isoprobability model.
Analytically solvable models -- particularly the Landau-Majorana-Stückelberg-Zener (LMSZ) and Allen-Eberly-Hioe (AEH) models -- underpin many quantum-gate implementations and population-transfer protocols. However, their canonical pulse shapes are incompatible with modern leakage-suppression techniques and some systems. Most notably, the constant Rabi envelope of the LMSZ pulse prevents many leakage-suppression approaches, which require smoothness. We address both limitations by developing the concept of isoprobability twin models: distinct pairs of Rabi frequency Ω(t) and detuning Δ(t) that yield identical post-pulse transition probabilities based on the Delos-Thorson transformation. In this work, we formalise the method by experimentally demonstrating the equivalence of multiple LMSZ and AEH twin models on IBM's ibm_kyiv processor. Finally, we show a staggering leakage reduction by more than 3 orders of magnitude using a custom DRAG implementation of a cosine LMSZ isoprobability model.
Abstract The Derivative Removal by Adiabatic Gate (DRAG) technique is the standard remedy for leakage to non-computational states in transmon-based quantum gates. However, a wide class of platforms—including fluxonium and composite-transmon qubits—cannot benefit from it, since their canonical gate implementations rely on Landau-Majorana-Stückelberg-Zener (LMSZ) protocols. Specifically, the constant Rabi envelope of the LMSZ model does not allow using the DRAG correction, which requires a non-zero first derivative. A complementary obstruction affects hardware that does not support time-dependent Rabi-frequency modulation: such platforms cannot benefit from the Allen-Eberly-Hioe (AEH) model either, an unpleasant fact given its analytical tractability. We resolve both limitations by introducing the concept of isoprobability twin models—distinct pairs of Rabi frequency Ω ( t ) and detuning Δ ( t ) that yield identical post-pulse transition probabilities through the Delos–Thorson transformation. We experimentally demonstrate the equivalence of multiple LMSZ and AEH twin models on IBM’s ibm_kyiv processor. We then show that the framework unlocks the DRAG technique by trading the canonical, constant-Rabi LMSZ pulse for a smooth cosine-Rabi twin, and numerically demonstrate that the resulting DRAG-corrected pulse suppresses leakage to a transmon’s non-computational states by up to six orders of magnitude at moderate chirp slopes and by three orders of magnitude on average over the entire driving landscape, while preserving the LMSZ transition-probability landscape.
Improving the speed and fidelity of quantum logic gates is essential to reach quantum advantage with future quantum computers. However, fast logic gates lead to increased leakage errors in superconducting quantum processors based on qubits with low anharmonicity, such as transmons. To reduce leakage errors, we propose and experimentally demonstrate two new analytical methods, Fourier ansatz spectrum tuning derivative removal by adiabatic gate (FAST DRAG) and higher-derivative (HD) DRAG, both of which enable shaping single-qubit control pulses in the frequency domain to achieve stronger suppression of leakage transitions compared to previously demonstrated pulse shapes. Using the new methods to suppress the e f transition of a transmon qubit with an anharmonicity of − 212 MHz, we implement R X ( π / 2 ) gates achieving a leakage error below 3.0 × 10 − 5 down to a gate duration of 6.25 ns without the need for iterative closed-loop optimization. The obtained leakage error represents a 20-fold reduction in leakage compared to a conventional cosine DRAG pulse. Employing the FAST DRAG method, we further achieve an error per gate of ( 1.56 ± 0.07 ) × 10 − 4 at a 7.9-ns gate duration, outperforming conventional pulse shapes both in terms of error and gate speed. Furthermore, we study error-amplifying measurements for the characterization of temporal microwave control-pulse distortions, and demonstrate that non-Markovian coherent errors caused by such distortions may be a significant source of error for sub-10-ns single-qubit gates unless corrected using predistortion. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Simple analytic pulse-shaping techniques are of great practical utility in quantum control, with prime examples being the DRAG method for suppressing leakage in superconducting microwave gates and the transitionless-driving approach to shortcuts-to-adiabaticity. Standard versions of these methods require two orthogonal control channels, with the second channel effectively breaking time-reversal symmetry. This appears to rule out their use in settings with only a single real-valued control field, such as the kind of baseband flux control that is common in many superconducting circuit architectures. We show here that a simple analytic pulse-shaping technique derived via a Magnus expansion is effective even with just a single baseband control channel. We demonstrate its efficacy by simulating a two-qubit gate between transmons realized with a tunable coupler and baseband flux pulses. Our corrections dramatically reduce non-adiabatic leakage caused by ramping the coupler: for realistic device parameters, leakage in a fast iSWAP gate is suppressed by up to three orders of magnitude. Our approach is general, goes beyond simply suppressing unwanted spectral weight at leakage transitions, and can be applied to a variety of platforms.
A fundamental challenge in quantum computing is to increase the number of operations within the qubit coherence time. While this can be achieved by decreasing the gate duration, the use of shorter signals increases their bandwidth and can cause leakage into energetically separated states. A common method to suppress leakage for short pulses is the Derivative Removal by Adiabatic Gate (DRAG) method, which, however, relies on IQ modulation of radio-frequency (RF) signals, thus cannot be applied to the baseband signals, e.g., for semiconductor spin qubits. This paper proposes a novel technique, Delayed Leakage Reduction (DLR), that suppresses leakage at targeted frequencies even for baseband control by using time-delayed repetitions of the control signal to enable rapid, high-fidelity operations. We apply DLR on the adiabatic CZ gate between two spin qubits and achieve fidelities exceeding 99.9% within 9.4 ns for a resonance frequency difference of only 100 MHz. Towards the experimental realization of the proposed control method, we also assess the impact on the fidelity of the sampling rate, noise, and signal quantization of the electronic hardware generating the control pulse, thus setting the minimum hardware requirements for any experimental demonstration.
High-fidelity control of superconducting qubits requires carefully shaped microwave pulses to avoid several different kinds of error at once. This article is a pedagogical bridging text aimed at upper-level undergraduate and early graduate students who have completed an introductory quantum mechanics course and a first course in quantum computing or quantum information, but who have not yet encountered the physical implementation of qubit gates. We integrate physical intuition for pulse design, analytical gate-level descriptions, and practical hardware considerations into a single, derivation-driven narrative, with explicit learning objectives. We begin with simple pulse envelopes and their spectral properties, showing how finite bandwidth produces leakage outside the computational subspace. This motivates the derivative removal by adiabatic gate (DRAG) technique, which we derive explicitly using the Magnus expansion, obtaining a clear, order-by-order account of which physical error channel appears at which order and why DRAG's cancellation is necessarily incomplete. We discuss the practical hardware realities of control pulse generation, focusing on arbitrary waveform generators (AWG), local oscillators (LO), and IQ mixing. Finally, we extend the discussion to two-qubit operation via the cross-resonance gate, and interpret how driving the control qubit at the target qubit's transition frequency necessarily produces several unwanted interaction terms alongside the desired one, and how successive generations of pulse-engineering strategies have been designed to suppress them.
Abstract The recently observed two-photon Landau–Zener–Stückelberg–Majorana (LZSM) effect in superconducting circuits [ Phys. Rev. Lett. 134 060602 (2025) ] has provided a robust pathway for high-fidelity population transfer in qudit systems, but its adiabatic nature necessitates long operation times, which are vulnerable to decoherence. In this paper, we present a practical acceleration scheme based on a superadiabatic (SUAD) framework that overcomes these fundamental limitations. Our approach is tailored to a multiphoton LZSM process. By constructing modified pulse envelopes for the existing drive field without introducing auxiliary counterdiabatic controls, we achieve accelerated high-fidelity state transfer from the ground state to the target excited state. For the two-photon case, our protocol reduces the operation time by more than four times compared with the adiabatic reference, while maintaining a fidelity of 0.998. We further generalize this to the three-photon regime, demonstrating a speedup factor exceeding three. Our SUAD LZSM scheme exhibits superior resilience to decoherence, offering a ready-to-implement solution for the fast and reliable control of multilevel quantum hardware.