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Quantum Science and Technology

Procedure for reducing cross-resonance gate errors using pulse-level control

David Dañin, Felix Tennie

Published Oct 21, 2024• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Current implementations of superconducting qubits are often limited by the low fidelities of multi-qubit gates. We present a reproducible and runtime-efficient pulse-level approach for calibrating an improved cross-resonance gate CR(θ) for arbitrary θ. This CR(θ) gate can be used to produce a wide range of other two-qubit gates via the application of standard single-qubit gates. By performing an interleaved randomised benchmarking sequence, we demonstrate that our approach leads to significantly lower incoherent errors than the circuit-level approach currently used by IBM. Hence, our procedure provides a genuine improvement for applications where noise remains a limiting factor.

DOI
10.1088/2058-9565/ad895b

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Abstract Current implementations of superconducting qubits are often limited by the low fidelities of multi-qubit gates. We present a reproducible and runtime-efficient pulse-level approach for calibrating an improved cross-resonance gate CR(θ) for arbitrary θ. This CR(θ) gate can be used to produce a wide range of other two-qubit gates via the application of standard single-qubit gates. By performing an interleaved randomised benchmarking sequence, we demonstrate that our approach leads to significantly lower incoherent errors than the circuit-level approach currently used by IBM. Hence, our procedure provides a genuine improvement for applications where noise remains a limiting factor.
Current implementations of superconducting qubits are often limited by the low fidelities of multi-qubit gates. We present a reproducible and runtime-efficient pulse-level approach for calibrating an improved cross-resonance gate CR(θθθ) for arbitrary θθθ. This CR(θθθ) gate can be used to produce a wide range of other two-qubit gates via the application of standard single-qubit gates. By performing an interleaved randomised benchmarking experiment, we demonstrate that our approach leads to a significantly higher noise resistance than the circuit-level approach currently used by IBM. Hence, our procedure provides a genuine improvement for applications where noise remains a limiting factor.
We present improvements in both theoretical understanding and experimental implementation of the cross resonance (CR) gate that have led to shorter two-qubit gate times and interleaved randomized benchmarking fidelities exceeding 99%. The CR gate is an all-microwave two-qubit gate that does not require tunability and is therefore well suited to quantum computing architectures based on two-dimensional superconducting qubits. The performance of the gate has previously been hindered by long gate times and fidelities averaging 94--96%. We have developed a calibration procedure that accurately measures the full CR Hamiltonian. The resulting measurements agree with theoretical analysis of the gate and also elucidate the error terms that have previously limited gate fidelity. The increase in fidelity that we have achieved was accomplished by introducing a second microwave drive tone on the target qubit to cancel unwanted components of the CR Hamiltonian.
High fidelity quantum operations are key to enabling fault-tolerant quantum computation. Superconducting quantum processors have demonstrated high-fidelity operations, but on larger devices there is commonly a broad distribution of qualities, with the low-performing tail affecting near-term performance and applications. Here we present an error budgeting procedure for the native two-qubit operation on a 32-qubit superconducting-qubit-based quantum computer, the OQC Toshiko gen-1 system. We estimate the prevalence of different forms of error such as coherent error and control qubit leakage, then apply error suppression strategies based on the most significant sources of error, making use of pulse-shaping and additional compensating gates. These techniques require no additional hardware overhead and little additional calibration, making them suitable for routine adoption. An average reduction of 3.7x in error rate for two qubit operations is shown across a chain of 16 qubits, with the median error rate improving from 4.6%\%% to 1.2%\%% as measured by interleaved randomized benchmarking. The largest improvements are seen on previously under-performing qubit pairs, demonstrating the importance of practical error suppression in reducing the low-performing tail of gate qualities and achieving consistently good performance across a device.
We theoretically consider a cross-resonance (CR) gate implemented by pulse sequences proposed by Calderon-Vargas and Kestner [Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 150502 (2017)]. These sequences mitigate systematic error to first order, but their effectiveness is limited by one-qubit gate imperfections. Using additional microwave control pulses, it is possible to tune the effective CR Hamiltonian into a regime where these sequences operate optimally. This improves the overall feasibility of these sequences by reducing the one-qubit operations required for error correction. We illustrate this by simulating randomized benchmarking for a system of weakly coupled transmons and show that while this pulse sequence does not offer an advantage with the current state of the art in transmons, it does improve the scaling of CR gate infidelity with one-qubit gate infidelity.
Native multiqubit parity gates have various potential quantum computing applications, such as entanglement creation, logical state encoding, and parity measurement in quantum error correction. Here, using simultaneous cross-resonance drives on two control qubits with a common target, we demonstrate an efficient implementation of a three-qubit parity gate. We have developed a calibration procedure based on that for the echoed cross-resonance gate. We confirm that our use of simultaneous drives leads to higher interleaved randomized benchmarking fidelities than a naive implementation with two consecutive controlled not gates. We also demonstrate that our simultaneous parity gates can significantly improve the parity measurement error probability for the heavy-hexagon code on an IBM Quantum processor using seven superconducting qubits with all-microwave control.
The cross-resonance (CR) gate is an entangling gate for fixed-frequency superconducting qubits. While being simple and extensible, it is comparatively slow, at 160 ns, and thus of limited fidelity due to on-going incoherent processes. Using two different optimal control algorithms, we estimate the quantum speed limit for a controlled-not cnot gate in this system to be 10 ns, indicating a potential for great improvements. We show that the ability to approach this limit depends strongly on the choice of ansatz used to describe optimized control pulses and limitations placed on their complexity. Using a piecewise-constant ansatz, with a single carrier and bandwidth constraints, we identify an experimentally feasible 70-ns pulse shape. Further, an ansatz based on the two dominant frequencies involved in the optimal control problem allows for an optimal solution more than twice as fast again, at under 30 ns, with smooth features and limited complexity. This is twice as fast as gate realizations using tunable-frequency, resonantly coupled qubits. Compared to current CR-gate implementations, we project our scheme will provide a sixfold speed-up and thus a sixfold reduction in fidelity loss due to incoherent effects.