I am going to post here all newly submitted articles on the arXiv related to superconducting circuits. If your article has been accidentally forgotten, feel free to contact me
21
Jan
2026
Bose condensation and Bogoliubov excitation in resonator-embedded superconducting qubit network
Superconducting qubit networks (SQNs) embedded in a low-dissipative resonator is a promising device allowing one not only to establish the collective quantum dynamics on a macroscopic
scale but also to greatly enhance the sensitivity of detectors of microwave photons. A quantum ac Stark effect provided by coupling between an SQN and microwave photons of a resonator, leads to a strong nonlinear interaction between photons. Here, we present a two-tone spectroscopy experiment in which a set of 10 superconducting flux qubits is coupled to the input R- resonator and the output T- transmission line. An external microwave pump field close to the resonance frequency populates macroscopically the resonator mode as a Bose-Einstein condensate, while a second probe beam scans the resonances referred also as Bogoliubov-like excitations. The corresponding excitation frequency measured from the transmission coefficient, |S21(f)| displays an abrupt change of the resonant dip position once the power of the pump field overcomes a critical value Pcr. This sharp shift occurs in a narrow region of pump frequencies, and can be tuned by an applied magnetic field. It is a signature of bistability of the photon number inside the resonator, in agreement with theory.
19
Jan
2026
Towards reliable electrical measurements of superconducting devices inside a transmission electron microscope
Correlating structure with electronic functionality is central to the engineering of quantum materials and devices whose properties depend sensitively on disorder. Transmission electron
microscopy (TEM) offers high spatial resolution together with access to structural, electronic, and magnetic degrees of freedom. However, electrical transport measurements on functional quantum devices remain rare, particularly at liquid helium temperature. Here, we demonstrate electrical transport measurements of niobium nitride (NbN) devices inside a TEM using a continuous-flow liquid-helium-cooled sample holder. By optimizing a thermal radiation shield to limit radiation from the nearby pole pieces of the objective lens, we achieve an estimated base sample temperature of 8-9 K, as inferred from the superconducting transition temperatures of our devices. We find that both electron beam imaging and the magnetic field of the objective lens perturb the superconducting state, because the base sample temperature is close to the superconducting transition temperature of NbN. Finally, we perform calculations that underscore the importance of cryo-shielding for minimizing thermal radiation onto the device. This capability enables correlative low-temperature TEM studies, in which structural, spectroscopic, and electrical transport data can be obtained from the same device, thereby providing a platform for probing the microscopic origins of quantum phenomena.
16
Jan
2026
Experimental observation of dynamical blockade between transmon qubits via ZZ interaction engineering
We report the experimental realization of strong longitudinal (ZZ) coupling between two superconducting transmon qubits achieved solely through capacitive engineering. By systematically
varying the qubit frequency detuning, we measure cross-Kerr inter-qubit interaction strengths ranging from 10 MHz up to 350 MHz, more than an order of magnitude larger than previously observed in similar capacitively coupled systems. In this configuration, the qubits enter a strong-interaction regime in which the excitation of one qubit inhibits that of its neighbor, demonstrating a dynamical blockade mediated entirely by the engineered ZZ coupling. Circuit quantization simulations accurately reproduce the experimental results, while perturbative models confirm the theoretical origin of the energy shift as a hybridization between the computational states and higher-excitation manifolds. We establish a robust and scalable method to access interaction-dominated physics in superconducting circuits, providing a pathway towards solid-state implementations of globally controlled quantum architectures and cooperative many-body dynamics.
The two-time Leggett-Garg inequalities of a superconducting qubit interacting with thermal photons in a cavity
In this paper, we study the two-time Leggett-Garg (LG) inequalities of a quantum optical model that appears in the Josephson-junction quantum bit (qubit) interacting with an external
magnetic flux. This model is a natural extension of an exactly solvable model whose interaction between a qubit and single-mode photons is given by a product of the Pauli z operator of the qubit and a linear combination of annihilation and creation operators of the photons. By contrast, a photon’s part of the interaction of our model is given by the square of the linear combination. Because our model is not solvable, we approximately investigate its time evolution up to the second-order perturbation. Our numerical calculations show that violation of the LG inequality diminishes as the temperature increases. Moreover, it exhibits power laws of the temperature, whose exponents vary depending on the coupling constant of the interaction between the qubit and photons. The violation of the LG inequality decreases and becomes less sensitive to the temperature as the coupling constant of the interaction gets larger.
Converting qubit relaxation into erasures with a single fluxonium
Qubits that experience predominantly erasure errors offer distinct advantages for fault-tolerant operation. Indeed, dual-rail encoded erasure qubits in superconducting cavities and
transmons have demonstrated high-fidelity operations by converting physical-qubit relaxation into logical-qubit erasures, but this comes at the cost of increased hardware overhead and circuit complexity. Here, we address these limitations by realizing erasure conversion in a single fluxonium operated at zero flux, where the logical state is encoded in its 0-2 subspace. A single, carefully engineered resonator provides both mid-circuit erasure detection and end-of-line (EOL) logical measurement. Post-selection on non-erasure outcomes results in more than four-fold increase of the logical lifetime, from 193 μs to 869 μs. Finally, we characterize measurement-induced logical dephasing as a function of measurement power and frequency, and infer that each erasure check contributes a negligible error of 7.2×10−5. These results establish integer-fluxonium as a promising, resource-efficient platform for erasure-based error mitigation, without requiring additional hardware.
Controlled Parity of Cooper Pair Tunneling in a Hybrid Superconducting Qubit
Superconducting quantum circuits derive their nonlinearity from the Josephson energy-phase relation. Besides the fundamental cosϕ term, this relation can also contain higher Fourier
harmonics cos(kϕ) corresponding to correlated tunneling of k Cooper pairs. The parity of the dominant tunneling process, i.e.~whether an odd or even number of Cooper pairs tunnel, results in qualitatively different properties, and controlling this opens up a wide range of applications in superconducting technology. However, access to even-dominated regimes has remained challenging and has so far relied on complex multi-junction or all-hybrid architectures. Here, we demonstrate a simple „harmonic parity qubit“ (HPQ); an element that combines two aluminum-oxide tunnel junctions in parallel to a gate-tunable InAs/Al nanowire junction forming a SQUID, and use spectroscopy versus flux to reconstruct its energy-phase relation at 85 gate voltage points. At half flux quantum, the odd harmonics of the Josephson potential can be suppressed by up to two orders of magnitude relative to the even harmonics, producing a double-well potential dominated by even harmonics with minima near ±π/2. The ability to control harmonic parity enables supercurrent carried by pairs of Cooper pairs and provides a new building block for Fourier engineering in superconducting circuits.
Transmon Architecture for Emission and Detection of Single Microwave Photons
We showcase the recently developed double transmon coupler (DTC) circuit as a compact, drop-in, tunable and transition-selective link between an otherwise coherent transmon and the
continuum of modes in a waveguide. We use these transmon-DTC devices as transmon emitter/dectectors (TEDs) for microwave photons. We highlight the flexibility of these devices by sending photons from a source TED to a measurement TED using a meter of coaxial cable and a circulator, each TED with nominally identical circuit parameters. We detect 60% of the photons using this setup where we infer that 95% of the photons at the input of the measurement TED are detected. Reset and photon emission/detection each require about 2μs, for a minimum protocol duration of 4μs, for our choice of TED parameters. Transmon-waveguide links like the DTC serve an important role in quantum information processors: they provide a mechanism for unconditional fast reset, metrology, and as nascent quantum communication interfaces for quantum networking.
15
Jan
2026
Topology-Aware Block Coordinate Descent for Qubit Frequency Calibration of Superconducting Quantum Processors
Pre-execution calibration is a major bottleneck for operating superconducting quantum processors, and qubit frequency allocation is especially challenging due to crosstalk-coupled objectives.
We establish that the widely-used Snake optimizer is mathematically equivalent to Block Coordinate Descent (BCD), providing a rigorous theoretical foundation for this calibration strategy. Building on this formalization, we present a topology-aware block ordering obtained by casting order selection as a Sequence-Dependent Traveling Salesman Problem (SD-TSP) and solving it efficiently with a nearest-neighbor heuristic. The SD-TSP cost reflects how a given block choice expands the reduced-circuit footprint required to evaluate the block-local objective, enabling orders that minimize per-epoch evaluation time. Under local crosstalk/bounded-degree assumptions, the method achieves linear complexity in qubit count per epoch, while retaining calibration quality. We formalize the calibration objective, clarify when reduced experiments are equivalent or approximate to the full objective, and analyze convergence of the resulting inexact BCD with noisy measurements. Simulations on multi-qubit models show that the proposed BCD-NNA ordering attains the same optimization accuracy at markedly lower runtime than graph-based heuristics (BFS, DFS) and random orders, and is robust to measurement noise and tolerant to moderate non-local crosstalk. These results provide a scalable, implementation-ready workflow for frequency calibration on NISQ-era processors.
Coherence Limits in Interference-Based cos(2φ) Qubits
We investigate the coherence properties of parity-protected cos(2φ) qubits based on interferences between two Josephson elements in a superconducting loop. We show that qubit implementations
of a cos(2φ) potential using a single loop, such as those employing semiconducting junctions, rhombus circuits, flowermon and KITE structures, can be described by the same Hamiltonian as two multi-harmonic Josephson junctions in a SQUID geometry. We find that, despite the parity protection arising from the suppression of single Cooper pair tunneling, there exists a fundamental trade-off between charge and flux noise dephasing channels. Using numerical simulations, we examine how relaxation and dephasing rates depend on external flux and circuit parameters, and we identify the best compromise for maximum coherence. With currently existing circuit parameters, the qubit lifetime T1 can exceed milliseconds while the dephasing time Tφ remains limited to only a few microseconds due to either flux or charge noise. Our findings establish practical limits on the coherence of this class of qubits and raise questions about the long-term potential of this approach.
Minimal-Energy Optimal Control of Tunable Two-Qubit Gates in Superconducting Platforms Using Continuous Dynamical Decoupling
We present a unified scheme for generating high-fidelity entangling gates in superconducting platforms by continuous dynamical decoupling (CDD) combined with variational minimal-energy
optimal control. During the CDD stage, we suppress residual couplings, calibration drifting, and quasistatic noise, resulting in a stable effective Hamiltonian that preserves the designed ZZ interaction intended for producing tunable couplers. In this stable SU(4) manifold, we calculate smooth low-energy single-quibt control functions using a variational geodesic optimization process that directly minimizes gate infidelity. We illustrate the methodology by applying it to CZ, CX, and generic engangling gates, achieving virtually unit fidelity and robustness under restricted single-qubit action, with experimentally realistic control fields. These results establish CDD-enhanced variational geometric optimal control as a practical and noise-resilient scheme for designing superconducting entangling gates.