Coherence-limited digital control of a superconducting qubit using a Josephson pulse generator at 3 K

Published

May 8, 2023

Author(s)

Manuel Castellanos Beltran, Adam Sirois, Logan Howe, David Olaya, John Biesecker, Samuel P. Benz, Pete Hopkins

Abstract

Compared to traditional semiconductor control electronics (TSCE) located at room temperature, cryogenic single flux quantum (SFQ) electronics can provide qubit measurement and control alternatives that address critical issues related to scalability of cryogenic quantum processors. Single-qubit control and readout have been demonstrated recently using SFQ circuits coupled to superconducting qubits. Experiments where the SFQ electronics are co-located with the qubit have suffered from excess decoherence and loss due to quasiparticle poisoning of the qubit. A previous experiment by our group showed that moving the control electronics to the 3 K stage of the dilution refrigerator avoided this source of decoherence in a high-coherence three-dimensional transmon geometry. In this paper, we also generate the pulses at the 3 K stage but have optimized the qubit design and control lines for scalable two-dimensional transmon devices. We directly compare the qubit lifetime T1,, coherence time T∗2, and gate fidelity when the qubit is controlled by the Josephson pulse generator (JPG) circuit vs the TSCE setup. We find agreement within the daily fluctuations for T1 and T∗2⁠, and agreement within 10% for randomized benchmarking. We also performed interleaved randomized benchmarking on individual JPG gates demonstrating an average error per gate of 0.46% showing good agreement with what is expected based on the qubit coherence and higher-state leakage. These results are an order of magnitude improvement in gate fidelity over our previous work and demonstrate that a Josephson microwave source operated at 3 K is a promising component for scalable qubit control.

Citation

Applied Physics Letters

Volume

122

Issue

19

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0147692

Local Download

Keywords

Quantum computing, scalable, cryogenic control, Josephson junction (JJ), Single Flux Quantum (SFQ), transmon, superconductor

Citation

Castellanos Beltran, M. , Sirois, A. , Howe, L. , Olaya, D. , Biesecker, J. , Benz, S. and Hopkins, P. (2023), Coherence-limited digital control of a superconducting qubit using a Josephson pulse generator at 3 K, Applied Physics Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0147692, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=936240 (Accessed October 20, 2025)