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
29
Nov
2025
Four-body interactions in Kerr parametric oscillator circuits
We theoretically present new unit circuits of Kerr parametric oscillators (KPOs) with four-body interactions, which enable the scalable embedding of all-to-all connected logical Ising
spins using the Lechner-Hauke-Zoller (LHZ) scheme. These unit circuits enable four-body interactions using linear couplers, making the circuit fabrication and characterization much simpler than those of conventional unit circuits with nonlinear couplers. Numerical calculations indicate that the magnitudes of the coupling constants can be comparable to those in conventional circuits. On the basis of this theory, we designed a four-KPO circuit and experimentally confirmed the four-body correlation by measuring the pump-phase dependence of the parity of the four-KPO states. We show that the choice of the pump frequencies are important not only to enable the four-body interaction, but to cancel the effects of other unwanted interactions. Using the circuit, we demonstrated the quantum annealing based on the LHZ scheme, where the strength of the interaction between the logical Ising spins is mapped to the local field and controlled by a coherent drive applied to each KPO.
28
Nov
2025
Evidence for unexpectedly low quasiparticle generation rates across Josephson junctions of driven superconducting qubits
Microwave drives applied to superconducting qubits (SCQs) are central to high-fidelity control and fast readout. However, recent studies find that even drives far below the superconducting
gap frequency may cause drive-induced quasiparticle generation (QPG) across Josephson junctions (JJs), posing a serious concern for fault-tolerant superconducting quantum computing. Here, we find experimental evidence that the actual QPG rates in strongly driven SCQs are remarkably lower than expected. We apply intense drive fields through readout resonators, reaching effective qubit drive amplitudes up to 300 GHz. The nonlinear response of the resonators enables quantification of the energy loss from SCQs into their environments, including the contribution from QPG. Even when conservatively attributing all measured dissipation to QPG, the observed energy dissipation rates are far lower than expected from the ideal QPG model. Meanwhile, calculations incorporating high-frequency cutoffs (HFCs) near 17-20 GHz in the QPG conductance can explain the experiments. These HFCs yield QPG rates a few orders of magnitude smaller than those without HFCs, providing evidence that the QPG rates are lower than predicted by the ideal model. Our findings prevent overestimation of drive-induced QPG and provide crucial guidance for operating superconducting quantum processors. Identifying the microscopic origin of the discrepancy opens new material and device opportunities to further mitigate QPG.
27
Nov
2025
Ultrafast Single Qubit Gates through Multi-Photon Transition Removal
One of the main enablers in quantum computing is having qubit control that is precise and fast. However, qubits typically have multilevel structures making them prone to unwanted transitions
from fast gates. This leakage out of the computational subspace is especially detrimental to algorithms as it has been observed to cause long-lived errors, such as in quantum error correction. This forces a choice between either achieving fast gates or having low leakage. Previous works focus on suppressing leakage by mitigating the first to second excited state transition, overlooking multi-photon transitions, and achieving faster gates with further reductions in leakage has remained elusive. Here, we demonstrate single qubit gates with a total leakage error consistently below 2.0×10−5, and obtain fidelities above 99.98% for pulse durations down to 6.8 ns for both X and X/2 gates. This is achieved by removing direct transitions beyond nearest-neighbor levels using a double recursive implementation of the Derivative Removal by Adiabatic Gate (DRAG) method, which we name the R2D method. Moreover, we find that at such short gate durations and strong driving strengths the main error source is from these higher order transitions. This is all shown in the widely-used superconducting transmon qubit, which has a weakly anharmonic level structure and suffers from higher order transitions significantly. We also introduce an approach for amplifying leakage error that can precisely quantify leakage rates below 10−6. The presented approach can be readily applied to other qubit types as well.
Quantum-Enhanced Picostrain Sensing with Superconducting Qubits
We propose a quantum-enhanced picostrain sensor that achieves Heisenberg-limited strain sensing using superconducting qubits. A strain-sensitive qubit s Hamiltonian is coupled to the
momentum quadrature of a microwave resonator, transducing mechanical strain ϵ into amplified spatial displacements of the resonator s phase space. Using homodyne detection of the resonator field and multipartite entanglement of N qubits, the protocol achieves a strain sensitivity Δϵ∼pϵ (picostrain), two orders of magnitude better than classical sensors. The scheme integrates natively with superconducting processors, enabling in-situ diagnostic and nanoscale material characterization.
Superconducting Qubit Gates Robust to Parameter Fluctuations
State-of-the-art single-qubit gates on superconducting transmon qubits can achieve the fidelities required for error-corrected computations. However, parameter fluctuations due to qubit
instabilities, environmental changes, and control inaccuracies make it difficult to maintain this performance. To mitigate the effects of these parameter variations, we numerically derive gates robust to amplitude and frequency errors using gradient ascent pulse engineering (GRAPE). We analyze how fluctuations in qubit frequency, drive amplitude, and coherence affect gate performance over time. The robust pulses suppress coherent errors from drive amplitude drifts over 15 times more than a Gaussian pulse with derivative removal by adiabatic gate (DRAG) corrections. Furthermore, the robust gates, originally designed to compensate for quasi-static errors, also demonstrate resilience to stochastic, time-dependent noise, which is reflected in the dephasing time. They suppress added errors during increases in dephasing by up to 1.7 times more than DRAG.
Raising the Cavity Frequency in cQED
The basic element of circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) is a cavity resonator strongly coupled to a superconducting qubit. Since the inception of the field, the choice of the cavity
frequency was, with a few exceptions, been limited to a narrow range around 7 GHz due to a variety of fundamental and practical considerations. Here we report the first cQED implementation, where the qubit remains a regular transmon at about 5 GHz frequency, but the cavity’s fundamental mode raises to 21 GHz. We demonstrate that (i) the dispersive shift remains in the conventional MHz range despite the large qubit-cavity detuning, (ii) the quantum efficiency of the qubit readout reaches 8%, (iii) the qubit’s energy relaxation quality factor exceeds 107, (iv) the qubit coherence time reproducibly exceeds 100 μs and can reach above 300 μs with a single echoing π-pulse correction. The readout error is currently limited by an accidental resonant excitation of a non-computational state, the elimination of which requires minor adjustments to the device parameters. Nevertheless, we were able to initialize the qubit in a repeated measurement by post-selection with 2×10−3 error and achieve 4×10−3 state assignment error. These results encourage in-depth explorations of potentially transformative advantages of high-frequency cavities without compromising existing qubit functionality.
26
Nov
2025
Experimental signatures of a σzσx beam-splitter interaction between a Kerr-cat and transmon qubit
Quantum error correction (QEC) requires ancilla qubits to extract error syndromes from data qubits which store quantum information. However, ancilla errors can propagate back to the
data qubits, introducing additional errors and limiting fault-tolerance. In superconducting quantum circuits, Kerr-cat qubits (KCQs), which exhibit strongly biased noise, have been proposed as ancillas to suppress this back-action and enhance QEC performance. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a beamsplitter interaction between a KCQ and a transmon, realizing an effective σzσx coupling that can be employed for parity measurements in QEC protocols. We characterize the interaction across a range of cat sizes and drive amplitudes, confirming the expected scaling of the interaction rate. These results establish a step towards hybrid architectures that combine transmons as data qubits with noise-biased bosonic ancillas, enabling hardware-efficient syndrome extraction and advancing the development of fault-tolerant quantum processors.
25
Nov
2025
Closed-Loop Phase-Coherence Compensation for Superconducting Qubits Integrated Computational and Hardware Validation of the Aurora Method
We present an emulator-based and hardware feasibility study of Aurora-DD, a phase-coherence compensation method that integrates a sign-based feedback update of a global phase offset
(Delta phi) with a fixed-depth XY8 dynamical decoupling (DD) scaffold. The feedback optimization is performed offline on a calibrated emulator and the resulting Delta phi* is deployed as pre-calibrated phase compensation on hardware. This represents an „offline closed-loop, online open-loop“ feasibility demonstration. Using an Aer-based emulator calibrated with ibm_fez device parameters, Aurora-DD achieves substantial reductions in mean-squared error of the measured expectation value , yielding 68-97% improvement across phase settings phi = 0.05, 0.10, 0.15, 0.20 over n=30 randomized trials. These large-n emulator results provide statistically stable evidence that the combined effect of XY8 and Delta phi* suppresses both dephasing and systematic phase bias. On real superconducting hardware (ibm_fez), we perform a small-sample (n=3) multi-phase validation campaign. Aurora-DD yields point estimates corresponding to approximately 99.2-99.6% reduction in absolute error relative to a no-DD baseline across all tested phase points. These hardware numbers are reported transparently as feasibility evidence under tight queue and credit constraints. In contrast, the auxiliary Aurora+ZNE branch exhibits instability: shallow two-point ZNE occasionally amplifies calibration inconsistencies and produces large error outliers. We therefore relegate ZNE analysis to the Appendix and position Aurora-DD (without ZNE) as the primary contribution. Overall, the combined results support pre-calibrated Aurora-DD as a practical, stable, and hardware-compatible phase-coherence compensator for NISQ devices in single-qubit settings.
Nonreciprocal quantum information processing with superconducting diodes in circuit quantum electrodynamics
Introducing new components and functionalities into quantum devices is critical in advancing state-of-the-art hardware. Here, we propose superconducting diodes (SDs) as a coherent nonreciprocal
element in circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) architectures. In particular, we use an asymmetric SQUID as an SD controlled with a flux bias. We spectroscopically characterize SD and show that flux bias acts cooperatively with the nonlinear diode response to induce direction-dependent resonance shifts in the transmission spectrum. We use the SD as an elementary component to realize coherent nonreciprocal qubit-qubit coupling. With a minimal two qubit system, we demonstrate a nonreciprocal half-iSWAP gate with tunable Bell-state generation, thereby showcasing the potential of intrinsic nonreciprocity as a tool in coherent control in quantum technologies. Our work enables high-fidelity signal routing and entanglement generation in all-to-all connected microwave quantum networks, where nonreciprocity is embedded at the device level.
Opportunities and Challenges of Computational Electromagnetics Methods for Superconducting Circuit Quantum Device Modeling: A Practical Review
High-fidelity numerical methods that model the physical layout of a device are essential for the design of many technologies. For methods that characterize electromagnetic effects,
these numerical methods are referred to as computational electromagnetics (CEM) methods. Although the CEM research field is mature, emerging applications can still stress the capabilities of the techniques in use today. The design of superconducting circuit quantum devices falls in this category due to the unconventional material properties and important features of the devices covering nanometer to centimeter scales. Such multiscale devices can stress the fundamental properties of CEM tools which can lead to an increase in simulation times, a loss in accuracy, or even cause no solution to be reliably found. While these challenges are being investigated by CEM researchers, knowledge about them is limited in the broader community of users of these CEM tools. This review is meant to serve as a practical introduction to the fundamental aspects of the major CEM techniques that a researcher may need to choose between to model a device, as well as provide insight into what steps they may take to alleviate some of their challenges. Our focus is on highlighting the main concepts without rigorously deriving all the details, which can be found in many textbooks and articles. After covering the fundamentals, we discuss more advanced topics related to the challenges of modeling multiscale devices with specific examples from superconducting circuit quantum devices. We conclude with a discussion on future research directions that will be valuable for improving the ability to successfully design increasingly more sophisticated superconducting circuit quantum devices. Although our focus and examples are taken from this area, researchers from other fields will still benefit from the details discussed here.