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Simultaneous sweet-spot locking of gradiometric fluxonium qubits

Bénâtre, Denis, Mathieu Féchant, Zapata, Nicolas, Gosling, Nicolas, Paluch, Patrick, Reisinger, Thomas, Ioan M. Pop

Published Jan 1, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Efforts to scale up superconducting processors that employ flux qubits face numerous challenges, among which is the crosstalk created by neighboring flux lines, which are necessary to bias the qubits at the zero-field and Φ$_0$/2 sweet spots. A solution to this problem is to use symmetric gradiometric loops, which incorporate a flux-locking mechanism that, once a fluxon is trapped during cooldown, holds the device at the sweet spot and limits the need for active biasing. We demonstrate this technique by simultaneously locking multiple gradiometric fluxonium qubits in which an aluminum loop retains the trapped fluxon indefinitely. By compensating the inductive asymmetry between the two loops of the design, we are able to lock the effective flux bias within Φ$_{eff}$ =−3 ×10$^{−4}$ ⁢Φ$_0$ from the target, corresponding to only 15% degradation in 𝑇$_{2,𝐸}$ when operated in zero external field. The design strategy demonstrated here reduces integration complexity for flux qubits by minimizing crosstalk and potentially eliminating the need for local flux bias.

DOI
10.5445/ir/1000187229

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Efforts to scale up superconducting processors that employ flux qubits face numerous challenges, among which is the crosstalk created by neighboring flux lines, which are necessary to bias the qubits at the zero-field and Φ0_00​/2 sweet spots. A solution to this problem is to use symmetric gradiometric loops, which incorporate a flux-locking mechanism that, once a fluxon is trapped during cooldown, holds the device at the sweet spot and limits the need for active biasing. We demonstrate this technique by simultaneously locking multiple gradiometric fluxonium qubits in which an aluminum loop retains the trapped fluxon indefinitely. By compensating the inductive asymmetry between the two loops of the design, we are able to lock the effective flux bias within Φeff_{eff}eff​ =−3 ×10−4^{−4}−4 ⁢Φ0_00​ from the target, corresponding to only 15% degradation in 𝑇2,𝐸_{2,𝐸}2,E​ when operated in zero external field. The design strategy demonstrated here reduces integration complexity for flux qubits by minimizing crosstalk and potentially eliminating the need for local flux bias.
Efforts to scale up superconducting processors that employ flux qubits face numerous challenges, among which is the crosstalk created by neighboring flux lines, which are necessary to bias the qubits at the zero-field and Φ 0 / 2 sweet spots. A solution to this problem is to use symmetric gradiometric loops, which incorporate a flux-locking mechanism that, once a fluxon is trapped during cooldown, holds the device at the sweet spot and limits the need for active biasing. We demonstrate this technique by simultaneously locking multiple gradiometric fluxonium qubits in which an aluminum loop retains the trapped fluxon indefinitely. By compensating the inductive asymmetry between the two loops of the design, we are able to lock the effective flux bias within Φ eff = − 3 × 10 − 4 Φ 0 from the target, corresponding to only 15 % degradation in T 2 , E when operated in zero external field. The design strategy demonstrated here reduces integration complexity for flux qubits by minimizing crosstalk and potentially eliminating the need for local flux bias.
In pursuit of superconducting quantum computing, fluxonium qubits have recently garnered attention for their large anharmonicity and high coherence at the sweet spot. Towards the large-scale integration of fluxonium qubits, a major obstacle is the need for precise external magnetic flux bias: To achieve high performance at its sweet spot, each qubit requires a DC bias line. However, such lines inductively coupled to the qubits bring in additional wiring overhead, crosstalk, heating, and decoherence, necessitating measures for mitigating the problems. In this work, we propose a flux-trapping fluxonium qubit, which, by leveraging fluxoid quantization, enables the optimal phase biasing without using external magnetic flux control at the operating temperature. We introduce the design and working principle, and demonstrate the phase biasing achieved through fluxoid quantization.
We demonstrate flux-bias locking and operation of a gradiometric fluxonium artificial atom using two symmetric granular aluminum (grAl) loops to implement the superinductor. The gradiometric fluxonium shows two orders of magnitude suppression of sensitivity to homogeneous magnetic fields, which can be an asset for hybrid quantum systems requiring strong magnetic field biasing. By cooling down the device in an external magnetic field while crossing the metal-to-superconductor transition, the gradiometric fluxonium can be locked either at 0 or Φ0/2 effective flux bias, corresponding to an even or odd number of trapped fluxons, respectively. At mK temperatures, the fluxon parity prepared during initialization survives to magnetic field bias exceeding 100 Φ0. However, even for states biased in the vicinity of 1 Φ0, we observe unexpectedly short fluxon lifetimes of a few hours, which cannot be explained by thermal or quantum phase slips. When operating in a deep-underground cryostat of the Gran Sasso laboratory, the fluxon lifetimes increase to days, indicating that ionizing events activate phase slips in the grAl superinductor.
Current superconducting quantum processors require strategies for coping with material defects and imperfect parameter targeting in order to scale up while maintaining high performance.To that end, in situ control of qubit frequencies with magnetic flux can be used to avoid spurious resonances.However, increased dephasing due to 1/f flux noise limits performance at all of these operating points except for noise-protected sweet spots, which are sparse under dc flux bias and monochromatic flux modulation.Here we experimentally demonstrate that two-tone flux modulation can be used to create a continuum of dynamical sweet spots, greatly expanding the range of qubit frequencies achievable while first-order insensitive to slow flux noise.To illustrate some advantages of this flexibility, we use bichromatic flux control to reduce the error rates and gate times of parametric entangling operations between transmons.Independent of the gate scheme, the ability to use flux control to freely select qubit frequencies while maintaining qubit coherence represents an important step forward in the robustness and scalability of near-term superconducting qubit devices.
In the pursuit of large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computation, various superconducting architectures have been investigated as the potential building blocks for these systems. With the need for fast operations with low error rates, fluxonium qubits have recently gained an increasing amount of attention. The fluxonium qubit offers numerous advantages including a large anharmonicity, long coherence times, protection against flux noise, and resilience against dielectric loss. In an effort to maximize the potential of these devices, we employ flux-pulse-assisted readout to increase the signal to noise ratio and, thus, minimize the readout time required. This readout scheme capitalizes on the high dispersive shift afforded by avoided crossings between the readout resonator and higher order fluxonium transitions. We present experimental results in which we display an advantage of flux-pulse-assisted readout over static readout at the so-called "sweet-spot" on multiple fluxonium qubits.
Operating superconducting qubits at dynamical sweet spots (DSSs) suppresses decoherence from low-frequency flux noise. A key open question is how long coherence can be extended under this strategy and what fundamental limits constrain it. Here we introduce a fully parameterized, multi-objective periodic-flux modulation framework that simultaneously optimizes energy relaxation T1T_1T1​ and pure dephasing TφT_φTφ​, thereby quantifying the tradeoff between them. For fluxonium qubits with realistic noise spectra, our method enhances TφT_φTφ​ by a factor of 3-5 compared with existing DSS strategies while maintaining T1T_1T1​ in the hundred-microsecond range. We further prove that, although DSSs eliminate first-order sensitivity to low-frequency noise, relaxation rate cannot be reduced arbitrarily close to zero, establishing an upper bound on achievable T1T_1T1​. At the optimized working points, we identify double-DSS regions that are insensitive to both DC and AC flux, providing robust operating bands for experiments. As applications, we design single- and two-qubit control protocols at these operating points and numerically demonstrate high-fidelity gate operations. These results establish a general and useful framework for Pareto-front engineering of DSSs that substantially improves coherence and gate performance in superconducting qubits.