Latest Papers

Achieving fault tolerance with superconducting quantum processors requires qubits to operate within the regime of threshold theorems based on the Born-Markov approximation. This approximation, which models dissipation as constant energy decay into a memoryless environment, breaks down when qubits couple to long-lived two-level systems (TLSs) that become polarized during operation and retain memory of past qubit states. Here, we show that non-Poissonian quantum jump traces carry the information required to distinguish long-lived TLSs from the standard Markovian bath. By fitting the Solomon equations to measured quantum jumps dynamics arising naturally due to thermal fluctuations, we can disentangle the coupling of the qubit to the two environments. Sweeping the qubit frequency reveals distinct peaks, each associated with a TLS that outlives the qubit, providing a handle to understand their microscopic origin.

Superconducting quantum circuits are promising platforms for scalable quantum computing, where qubit coherence is critically determined by microscopic defects in the oxide tunneling barrier of Josephson junctions. Amorphous Al$_2$O$_3$ is widely used as a barrier material, but under irradiation, oxygen vacancy (V$_O$) defects are readily generated, introducing noise sources that accelerate qubit decoherence. We systematically investigate the structural characteristics and electronic impact of V$_O$ defects in amorphous Al$_2$O$_3$ using first-principles calculations and \textit{ab initio} molecular dynamics. Our results show that both the coordination environment and concentration of V$_O$s strongly influence electrical conductivity. In particular, two- and three-coordinated V$_O$s, unique to the amorphous structure, enhance conductivity more than conventional four-coordinated vacancies. Increasing V$_O$ concentration amplifies conductivity fluctuations, which we link to critical current noise in Josephson junctions. Using a noise model, we estimate that higher V$_O$ densities lead to shorter qubit coherence times. These findings provide insights for radiation-hard design of superconducting quantum devices.

Dielectric loss at the interfaces of superconducting films has long been recognized as limiting the performance of state-of-the-art superconducting circuits. Notably, the presence of a native oxide layer on the film is hypothesized to contribute to dielectric loss at the metal-air interface. Here, we explore rhenium as a candidate for the film, motivated by its remarkable property to suppress native oxide formation. We demonstrate rhenium on sapphire as a promising material platform for superconducting circuits through the realization of transmons with mean relaxation times $T_1$ up to 407 microseconds at 5 GHz. Our transmons are supplemented with a loss characterization study, in which we separate the dominant loss mechanisms and construct a loss budget that agrees with our $T_1$ measurements. Further characterization may establish rhenium as a leading candidate for maximizing decoherence time.

Increasing connectivity and decreasing qubit-state delocalization without compromising the speed and accuracy of elementary gate operations are topical challenges in the development of large-scale superconducting quantum computers. In this theoretical work, we study a special honeycomb qubit lattice where each qubit inside a unit cell is coupled to every other one via two dedicated tunable couplers and a common central element. This results in an effective multi-mode interaction enabling tunable, on-demand, all-to-all connectivity between each qubit pair within the unit cell. We provide a thorough analysis of the unit cell, including a proposal for a novel and efficient conditional-Z gate scheme which takes advantage of the effective multi-mode coupling. We develop an experimentally viable pulse protocol for a single-step gate implementation which considerably improves the gate speed compared to the previous two-qubit-gate realizations suggested for architectures utilizing a center mode. We also show numerical results on how the presence of spectator qubits affects the average two-qubit-gate fidelity, and analyse how the multi-mode coupling structure mitigates the delocalization-induced crosstalk during simultaneous single-qubit gates within the unit cell. We also provide analytical estimates for the errors caused by relaxation and dephasing during a two-qubit-gate operation, including noise terms for the multi-mode coupling structure. Our multi-mode coupling architecture results in a good balance between increased connectivity and available parallelism, especially when several interacting unit cells form a quantum processing unit. We anticipate that the obtained results pave the way towards high-connectivity quantum processors with efficient and low-overhead quantum algorithms.

In recent years, several architectures have been proposed for implementing two-qubit operations on fluxonium superconducting qubits. A particularly promising approach, which was demonstrated experimentally by Refs. [1,2], employs a transmon superconducting qubit as a tunable coupler between the fluxonium qubits. These experiments have shown that the transmon coupler enables fast, high-fidelity two-qubit operations while suppressing unwanted ZZ crosstalk between the fluxonium qubits. In this work, we numerically study the scalability of this architecture. We find that, when trivially scaling this architecture, crosstalk from spectator qubits limits the gate fidelity to below 90%. We show that these spectator errors can be reduced to below $10^{-4}$ by reducing the coupling strength and by dynamically tuning transmons that are not used for a two-qubit operation to an off position. We further investigate the resilience of the operation to direct capacitive coupling between the transmon couplers and to microwave crosstalk.

We investigate the influence of phonon degrees of freedom on the qubit dynamics in Jaynes-Cummings (JC) model. A strong qubit-phonon coupling is considered giving rise to Jaynes-Cummings-Holstein (JCH) model. Under anti-adiabatic conditions, we perform a unitary transformation to make the underlying problem tractable through Redfield-type non-Markovian master equation. Analytical expression for the time-dependent coherence is obtained, incorporating both cavity-induced dissipation and phonon-induced dressing effects. The dynamics of JC model is highly non-Markovian for a narrow spectral width and finite detuning. However, a non-zero phonon coupling suppresses these non-Markovian features by effectively reducing the qubit-cavity interaction strength. {It is observed that polaronic dressing effectively supresses the detuning effects. Furthermore, the coherence-based non-Markovianity measure shows an order-of-magnitude suppression in the JCH model, indicating a new dynamical regime, while memory effects extend over a wider range of spectral densities than in the JC model.

Superconducting circuits have demonstrated significant potential in quantum information processing and quantum sensing. Implementing novel control and measurement sequences for superconducting qubits is often a complex and time-consuming process, requiring extensive expertise in both the underlying physics and the specific hardware and software. In this work, we introduce a framework that leverages a large language model (LLM) to automate qubit control and measurement. Specifically, our framework conducts experiments by generating and invoking schema-less tools on demand via a knowledge base on instrumental usage and experimental procedures. We showcase this framework with two experiments: an autonomous resonator characterization and a direct reproduction of a quantum non-demolition (QND) characterization of a superconducting qubit from literature. This framework enables rapid deployment of standard control-and-measurement protocols and facilitates implementation of novel experimental procedures, offering a more flexible and user-friendly paradigm for controlling complex quantum hardware.

Multimode cavity-QED systems can be leveraged to explore a wide range of physical phenomena; however, a complex multimode environment makes systematic characterization of light-matter interactions challenging. Here we present a general measurement protocol, applicable to both atomic and synthetic cavity-QED systems, that enables the determination of coupling to individual photonic modes. The method leverages measurements of the AC-Stark and Kerr effects, along with known detuning dependencies, to eliminate the need for single-photon resolution, independent photon-number calibration, or insertion-loss calibration. We demonstrate the method using a superconducting transmon qubit coupled to a one-dimensional microwave resonator lattice. We validate the consistency of the extracted light-matter couplings $g$ determined at multiple qubit detunings, and from the self-Kerr and cross-Kerr shifts for three photon modes, which provide separate measurements of $g$ for each of the three modes.

While two-level systems (TLS) in superconducting qubits are known to introduce phonon-mediated energy dissipation channels, many-body TLS systems themselves can also act as a distinct dissipation channel whose effect on qubit energy relaxation remains to be explored. In this work, we model and numerically simulate the irreversible thermalization-driven energy relaxation of a superconducting qubit coupled to a many-body TLS system. Our numerical results show that thermalization suppresses coherent energy exchange between the qubit and TLS, resulting in exponential energy decay. The relaxation times scale as $T_1, T_2 \propto J^{-2}$, where $J$ denotes the qubit-TLS coupling strength. Moreover, $T_1$ is significantly affected by the internal coupling strength of the TLS system, the TLS frequency fluctuation rate, and the number of thermally excited TLS. This work provides a quantum thermalization perspective for understanding qubit energy relaxation and decoherence, with potential implications for decoherence scenarios in other open quantum systems.

Coherent detection of ultralight bosonic dark matter can be achieved by monitoring slow Rabi oscillations in superconducting qubits. We introduce an ancilla-assisted, gate-based protocol that enhances sensitivity to the hidden photon kinetic mixing parameter $ε$ using a single two-qubit gate, bypassing the need to maintain long-lived multi-qubit entangled states and remaining compatible with the limitations of modern quantum hardware. We characterized the increase in sensitivity accounting for decoherence, thermal occupation, errors in readout and reset, indicating up to a ten-fold reduction in the required integration time to reach the same exclusion limit on $ε$ achievable via Rabi-sampling experiments. Under plausible hardware assumptions and three years of data taking, the projected $95\%$ C.L. exclusion limit on the hidden photon mixing parameter reaches $ε\approx 1\times 10^{-14}$ across $2.5$-$6.0$ GHz ($10$-$25$ \textmu eV).

Superconducting quantum processors operate at microwave frequencies in millikelvin environments, making it challenging to interconnect distant nodes using conventional microwave wiring. Coherent microwave-to-optical (M2O) transduction enables superconducting quantum networks by interfacing itinerant microwave photons with low-loss optical fiber. However, many state-of-the-art transducers provide efficient conversion only over a narrow frequency span, complicating deployment with heterogeneous superconducting devices that are detuned by gigahertz-scale offsets. Here we demonstrate a frequency-agile microwave-optical interface that overcomes this bandwidth mismatch by cascading an electro-optic M2O transducer with a multimode microwave-to-microwave (M2M) frequency converter, with in situ tunability of the microwave resonances in both stages. Using this architecture, we realize continuous frequency coverage from 5.0 to 8.5 GHz within a single system. As an application relevant to superconducting-qubit networking, we use the cascaded M2M-M2O interface to optically read out a superconducting qubit whose readout resonator is detuned by 1.7 GHz from the native M2O microwave resonance, demonstrating a scalable route toward fiber-linked superconducting quantum nodes.

We measure the effect of ionizing radiation on superconducting qubits with a timing resolution of 1 $μs$ using microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) fabricated on the same substrate. We observe no correlation between two-level system (TLS) scrambling events and ionizing radiation events detected with the MKIDs, suggesting TLS scrambling events may not arise from ionizing radiation and instead the previously reported apparent correlation may be due to events without sufficient energy to trigger our MKIDs. We characterize the fast-time system recovery of transmons following a radiation event, where we observe the recovery of the enhanced qubit relaxation and excitation to be well-described by an exponential recovery to the baseline quasiparticle density, with a characteristic time of $13\pm1\ μ$s, and a peak quasiparticle density at the junction per deposited energy of $240/μm^3/MeV$. The fast recovery is consistent with literature reported values for Nb-based devices with direct injection of 2$Δ_{\text{Al}}$ phonons, demonstrating the recovery is strongly dependent on the proximity of niobium to the junction.

Single-shot fidelity is the standard benchmark for superconducting qubit readout, yet it does not directly minimize the wall-clock time needed to certify a quantum state. We treat the dispersive measurement record as a stochastic communication channel and compute the classical Chernoff information governing the multi-shot error exponent, using a trajectory model that incorporates T1 relaxation with full cavity memory. The integration time that maximizes single-shot fidelity and the time that minimizes total certification time do not coincide. For representative transmon parameters and hardware overheads, the throughput-optimal window is longer, cutting certification time by roughly 9-11%, with the gain saturating near 1.13x in the high-readout-power and high-overhead regime. Benchmarking the extracted classical information against the unit-efficiency Gaussian Chernoff limit defines an information-extraction efficiency: dispersive schemes capture ~45% at short integration times, dropping to eta_info(tau_rate) ~ 12% at tau_rate ~ 1.22 us as T1-induced trajectory smearing accumulates. These results connect readout calibration directly to the operational objective of minimizing certification time in high-throughput superconducting processors.

This work presents a digital quantum simulation of a three-level atomic system interacting with a single-mode electromagnetic field based on the Jaynes-Cummings model, implemented on IBM Quantum superconducting processors. A qutrit is encoded using two physical qubits to represent the atomic states, while an additional qubit encodes the truncated field mode, enabling the realization of effective $Λ$-type atomic dynamics.The continuous-time light-matter interaction is implemented in a digital form by discretizing the evolution using Suzuki-Trotter decomposition. In contrast to an analog realization, the digital simulation replaces the continuous evolution with a sequence of quantum gates whose parameters are explicitly controlled. Phase evolution arising from the interaction Hamiltonian is digitally encoded using calibrated $R_Z$ gates, whose rotation angles are fixed by the physically relevant coupling scale and the chosen Trotter time step.State preparation is achieved using Hadamard and parametrized rotation gates, while the interaction dynamics are implemented through controlled operations. A comparative analysis between first- and second-order Trotter implementations reveals a trade-off between digital accuracy and hardware-induced noise. Overall, the results demonstrate that calibrated gate operations and noise-aware circuit design enable reliable digital simulation of multi-level light-matter interactions on noisy intermediate-scale quantum platforms.

This paper presents a comprehensive cryogenic analog signal processing architecture designed for superconducting qubit control and quantum state readout operating at 4 Kelvin. The proposed system implements a complete bidirectional signal path bridging room-temperature digital controllers with quantum processors at millikelvin stages. The control path incorporates a Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) for stable local oscillator generation, In-phase/Quadrature (I/Q) modulation for precise qubit gate operations, and a cryogenic power amplifier for signal conditioning. The readout path features a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) with 14 dB gain and 8-Phase Shift Keying (8-PSK) demodulation for quantum state discrimination. All circuit blocks are designed and validated through SPICE simulations employing cryogenic MOSFET models at 180nm that account for carrier freeze-out, threshold voltage elevation, and enhanced mobility at 4 K. Simulation results demonstrate successful end-to-end signal integrity with I/Q phase error below 2°, image rejection ratio exceeding 35~dB, and symbol error rate below $10^{-6}$. This work provides a modular, simulation-validated framework for scalable cryogenic quantum control systems.

Packages capable of supporting large arrays of high-coherence superconducting qubits are vital for the realisation of fault-tolerant quantum computers and the necessary high-throughput metrology required to optimise fabrication and manufacturing processes. We present a wafer-scale packaging architecture supporting over 500 qubits on a single 3-inch die. The package is engineered to suppress parasitic RF modes, and to mitigate material loss through simulation-informed design while managing differential thermal contraction to ensure robust operation at millikelvin temperatures. System-level heat-load calculations from a large wiring payload show this package may be operated in commercial dilution refrigerators. Measurements of the qubits loaded into the package show median $T_1$, $T_{2e} \sim 100~μ$s ($\sim$100 qubits) alongside readout with median fidelity of 97.5% (54 qubits) and a median qubit temperature of 36 mK (54 qubits). These results validate the performance of these packages and demonstrate that large-scale integration can be achieved without compromising device performance. Finally, we highlight the utility of these packages as a tool for high throughput feedback on qubit figures of merit over large sample sizes, allowing identification of performance outliers in the tails of the coherence distribution, a critical capability for informing fabrication and manufacture of high-quality quantum qubits and quantum processors.

Superconducting qubit parameters drift on sub-second timescales, motivating calibration and benchmarking techniques that can be executed on millisecond timescales. We demonstrate an on-FPGA workflow that co-locates pulse generation, data acquisition, analysis, and feed-forward, eliminating CPU round trips. Within this workflow, we introduce sparse-sampling and on-FPGA inference tools, including computationally efficient methods for estimation of exponential and sine-like response functions, as well as on-FPGA implementations of Nelder-Mead optimization and golden-section search. These methods enable low-latency primitives for readout calibration, spectroscopy, pulse-amplitude calibration, coherence estimation, and benchmarking. We deploy this toolset to estimate $T_1$ in 10 ms, optimize readout parameters in 100 ms, optimize pulse amplitudes in 1 ms, and perform Clifford randomized gate benchmarking in 107 ms on a flux-tunable superconducting transmon qubit. Running a closed-loop on-FPGA recalibration protocol continuously for 6 hours enables more than 74,000 consecutive recalibrations and yields gate errors that consistently retain better performance than the baseline initial calibration. Correlation analysis shows that recalibration suppresses coupling of gate error to control-parameter drift while preserving a coherence-linked performance. Finally, we quantify uncertainty versus time-to-decision under our sparse sampling approaches and identify optimal parameter regimes for efficient estimation of qubit and pulse parameters.

Transmon qubits are a cornerstone of modern superconducting quantum computing platforms. Temporal fluctuations of energy relaxation in these qubits are widely attributed to microscopic two-level systems (TLSs) in device dielectrics and interfaces, yet isolating individual defects typically relies on tuning the qubit or the TLS into resonance. We demonstrate a novel spectroscopy method for fixed-frequency transmons based on multilevel relaxation: repeated preparation of the second excited state and simultaneous $T_1$ extraction of the first and second excited states reveals characteristic correlations in the decay rates of adjacent transitions. From these correlations we identify one or more dominant TLSs and reconstruct their frequency drift over time. Remarkably, we find that TLSs detuned by $\gtrsim 100\,\mathrm{MHz}$ from the qubit transition can still significantly influence relaxation. The proposed method provides a powerful tool for TLS spectroscopy without the need to tune the transmon frequency, either via a flux-tunable inductor or AC-Stark shifts.

Superconducting qubits have achieved remarkable progress in gate fidelity and coherence, yet their typical nearest-neighbor connectivity presents constraints for implementing complex quantum circuits. Here, we introduce a cavity-mediated coupling architecture in which a shared cavity mode, accessed through tunable qubit-cavity couplers, enables dynamically reconfigurable interactions between non-adjacent qubits. By selectively activating the couplers, we demonstrate that high-fidelity iSWAP and CZ gates can be performed within 50 ns with simulated coherent error below $10^{-4}$, while residual $ZZ$ interaction during idling remains below a few kilohertz. Extending to a four-qubit system, we also simulate gates between every qubit pair by selectively enabling the couplers with low qubit crosstalk. This approach provides a practical route toward enhanced interaction flexibility in superconducting quantum processors and may serve as a useful building block for devices that benefit from selective non-local coupling.

When the photonic mode in the Jaynes-Cummings model is driven by an external classical field, the system can undergo the photon-blockade breakdown phase transition at a critical point. Such a phase transition has been detailedly investigated, but the critical properties of the eigenstates remain largely unexplored so far. We here study the geometric criticality associated with these eigenstates. The amplitude and phase of the drive serve as the control parameter of the governing Hamiltonian. We find the quantum metric and Berry curvature tensors for each eigenstate display divergent behaviors in the critical region. More importantly, the divergence associated with bright eigenstates is much more pronounced than that for the unique dark state. Our theoretical results can be experimentally confirmed in circuit quantum electrodynamics systems, where the driven Jaynes-Cummings model has been realized.