Electron charge qubits are compelling candidates for solid-state quantum computing because of their inherent simplicity in qubit design, fabrication, control, and readout. However, all existing electron charge qubits, built upon conventional semiconductors and superconductors, suffer from severe charge noise that limits the coherence time to the order of 1 microsecond. Here, we report our experimental realization of ultralong-coherence electron charge qubits, based upon isolated single electrons trapped on an ultraclean solid neon surface in vacuum. Quantum information is encoded in the motional states of an electron that is strongly coupled with microwave photons in an on-chip superconducting resonator. The measured relaxation time
T1 and coherence time
T2 are both on the order of 0.1 milliseconds. The single-shot readout fidelity without using a quantum-limited amplifier is 98.1%. The average single-qubit gate fidelity using Clifford-based randomized benchmarking is 99.97%. Simultaneous strong coupling of two qubits with the same resonator is demonstrated, as a first step toward two-qubit entangling gates for universal quantum computing. These results manifest that the electron-on-solid-neon (eNe) charge qubits outperform all existing charge qubits to date and rival state-of-the-art superconducting transmon qubits, offering an appealing platform for quantum computing.
The tunnelling of quasiparticles across Josephson junctions in superconducting quantum circuits is an intrinsic decoherence mechanism for qubit degrees of freedom. Understanding the limits imposed by quasiparticle tunnelling on qubit relaxation and dephasing is of theoretical and experimental interest, particularly as improved understanding of extrinsic mechanisms has allowed crossing the 100 microsecond mark in transmon-type charge qubits. Here, by integrating recent developments in high-fidelity qubit readout and feedback control in circuit quantum electrodynamics, we transform a state-of-the-art transmon into its own real-time charge-parity detector. We directly measure the tunnelling of quasiparticles across the single junction and isolate the contribution of this tunnelling to qubit relaxation and dephasing, without reliance on theory. The millisecond timescales measured demonstrate that quasiparticle tunnelling does not presently bottleneck transmon qubit coherence, leaving room for yet another order of magnitude increase. Superconducting circuits are promising for quantum computing, but quasiparticle tunnelling across Josephson junctions introduces qubit decoherence. Ristè et al. convert a transmon qubit into its own real-time quasiparticle tunnelling detector and accurately measure induced decoherence in the millisecond range.