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
07
Mai
2026
Revisiting the multi-mode rhombus circuit as a biased-noise qubit
In this work, we revisit the idea of using an interferometer of pairs of Josephson junctions as a protected rhombus qubit. Unlike in the original proposal, where the qubit states are
encoded into odd and even parity charge states, here, we intentionally alter the energy of one of the junctions to investigate the soft version of the rhombus qubit. This approach allows us to directly probe the qubit transitions over several GHz and reduce the potential drawbacks of the interferometer-based protection. Away from a half flux quantum external field, the large shunting capacitors of the circuit ensure localized qubit states in different phase valleys, leading to a biased-noise qubit. In the realized circuit, we measure an average T1≈500μs relaxation time in the biased-noise regime (with a Ramsey dephasing time of TRφ≈90ns), while an average T1≈27μs relaxation time at frustration (with TRφ≈670ns). Our loss analysis on this multi-mode circuit indicates that at low frequencies, flux noise and quasiparticle tunneling limit the relaxation times, pointing toward the presence of an optimal operating regime of around a few GHz.
06
Mai
2026
Network-Mediated Capacitive Coupling Drives Fast OTOC Saturation in Superconducting Circuits
We investigate the dynamical and spectral consequences of capacitance-network-mediated interactions in superconducting transmon arrays beyond effective nearest-neighbor descriptions.
While weak coupling regimes are well captured by an effective nearest-neighbor interacting models, we show that increasing capacitive connectivity induces a pronounced departure from this approximation in dynamical observables. Using Out-of-Time-Ordered Correlators (OTOCs), we demonstrate that such network-mediated couplings significantly accelerate operator scrambling, leading to rapid saturation compared to the nearest-neighbor limit. This dynamical crossover is accompanied by a shift in spectral statistics away from Poissonian behavior toward level repulsion, with the ratio parameter remaining intermediate between Poisson and Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble (GOE) limits. This indicates the emergence of partial ergodicity rather than fully developed quantum chaos. As this behavior arises within experimentally realistic regimes of current superconducting transmon devices, identifying when network-mediated couplings qualitatively alter information dynamics is directly relevant for scalable superconducting architectures.
04
Mai
2026
Readout failures in superconducting qubits due to TLS-defects in tunnel junctions
Material defects give rise to parasitic two-level systems (TLS) which present a major source of decoherence in superconducting qubits. Here, we study a strongly coupled TLS that resides
in the tunnel barrier of transmon qubit. We use multi-photon spectroscopy and TLS strain tuning to explore the rich spectrum of the interacting three-partite system consisting of TLS, qubit, and its readout resonator. This reveals a strong effective resonant coupling between the TLS and the qubit’s readout resonator which dresses the resonator states and results in a resonance frequency shift that spoils the readout signal. Our finding presents yet another way how material defects can interfere with qubit operation and hinder the realization of solid-state quantum processors.
29
Apr
2026
System-Level Design of Scalable Fluxonium Quantum Processors with Double-Transmon Couplers
Fluxonium qubits combine long coherence times with strong anharmonicity, making them a promising platform for scalable superconducting quantum processors. Recent experiments have demonstrated
high-fidelity operations in multi-qubit processors while suppressing stray qubit interactions using fluxonium-transmon-fluxonium (FTF) architectures. However, scaling such systems to larger arrays is constrained by a trade-off between achievable coupling strength, crosstalk suppression and qubit-qubit spacing required for wiring in a two-dimensional architecture. Multimode couplers, such as the double-transmon coupler (DTC), provide a promising pathway to overcome this limitation by enabling stronger interactions without compromising qubit spacing and isolation. Here, we develop a quantitative design framework for fluxonium-based quantum processors employing DTCs. Central to this work is a frequency-partitioned architecture that places qubit transitions, tunable-coupler excitations, and resonator modes in well-separated spectral regions. This structured allocation reduces parameter interdependence and enables the concurrent optimization of gate operations, readout, and qubit reset. By formulating device design as a multi-objective optimization problem under realistic experimental constraints and fabrication-induced disorder, we develop a tractable sequential workflow and determine a feasible parameter regime that simultaneously supports high-fidelity single- and two-qubit gates, fast qubit reset, and robust dispersive readout. These results establish a system-level architectural methodology that links circuit parameters to processor-level performance, and provide an experimentally actionable pathway toward scalable fluxonium quantum processors.
28
Apr
2026
Millikelvin digital-to-analog converter for superconducting quantum processors
Scaling superconducting quantum processors is increasingly constrained by the wiring, heat load, and calibration overhead associated with delivering high-resolution analog signals from
room temperature to qubits at millikelvin temperature. Here we demonstrate a superconducting digital-to-analog converter (DAC) integrated with high-coherence fluxonium qubits in a multi-chip module architecture. The DACs generate persistent analog flux signals for tuning qubit parameters and are programmed deterministically using single-flux-quantum (SFQ) pulses, providing a digital interface compatible with established SFQ routing and demultiplexing technologies. Operating at millikelvin temperature, the DACs enable in-situ tuning of fluxonium qubits without measurable degradation of qubit coherence. The presented device provides a static control primitive for flux-tunable qubits, enabling parameter homogenization and eliminating the need for individual room-temperature DC bias lines. These results establish SFQ-programmable millikelvin DACs as a building block for digitally controlled superconducting quantum processors.
A simple method to fabricate Josephson junctions
A minimal method to fabricate Al/AlOx/Al Josephson junctions (JJs) using photolithography and argon etching, before metallization and oxidation, is demonstrated. JJs with areas ranging
from 1 to 6 μm2 can be fabricated and, with the appropriate oxidation conditions, the junction resistance can be varied by ∼2 orders of magnitude. Transmission electron microscopy reveals the successful fabrication of JJs with few grain boundaries suggesting reduced energy loss from two-level-systems. Superconducting QUantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs) fabricated from this methodology exhibit reduced resistance variation of over multiple chips, compared with electron beam lithography, and the devices can sustain repeated thermal cycles to 10 mK with the excellent flux response remaining unchanged. The quantum applications of this technology are demonstrated by embedding a SQUID resonator into a 3D cavity and parametrically amplifying low photon numbers with gains of ∼40 dB. This work establishes the simplest approach to fabricating JJs to date, and it could prove pivotal to the widespread utilization of superconducting circuit-based quantum technologies.
27
Apr
2026
Third Quantization for Order Parameters (II): Local Field Quantization in Superconducting Quantum Circuits
The quantization of superconducting transmission-line resonators is usually introduced phenomenologically by modeling the resonator as an effective LC circuit and imposing canonical
commutation relations on macroscopic variables such as charge and flux. Although this approach is highly successful, it leaves open why these macroscopic variables should obey quantum commutation relations and how this behavior emerges from the superconducting state. In this work, starting from the microscopic pairing Hamiltonian underlying BCS superconductivity, we derive the low-energy effective Hamiltonian of a circuit-QED architecture containing a superconducting transmission line with distributed capacitive and inductive elements. We establish quantitative relations between macroscopic observables, including current and voltage, and the spatially local superconducting phase, as well as the microscopic parameters of the electron-phonon system. We then extend the third quantization of the superconducting order parameter, introduced in Paper (I) for the global phase, to the spatially local case. This gives a macroscopic field quantization of the superconducting phase. We show that, after restriction to the low-energy excitation subspace, the local superconducting phase becomes a genuine quantum dynamical variable. Thus, the quantum behavior of transmission-line resonators need not be postulated at the macroscopic level, but follows from the third quantization of the superconducting order parameter. These results suggest that capacitive and inductive superconducting circuit elements share the same microscopic origin, providing a unified framework for superconducting circuit quantization.
Data-Driven Hamiltonian Reduction for Superconducting Qubits via Meta-Learning
We introduce HAML (Hamiltonian Adaptation via Meta-Learning), a framework for fast online adaptation of effective Hamiltonian models of superconducting quantum processors. HAML proceeds
in two phases. A supervised training phase uses an ensemble of simulated devices to learn an offline map from control inputs and device parameters to effective Hamiltonian coefficients. An online adaptation phase then uses a small number of hardware-accessible measurements to identify the unknown parameters of a new device. By training directly against effective two-qubit coefficients extracted from full multi-mode simulations, HAML implicitly learns the reduction from full multi-mode Hamiltonians to effective qubit descriptions without invoking perturbation theory. We further show that a variance-maximizing greedy selection of measurement configurations boosts online adaptation efficiency. We demonstrate HAML on a transmon-coupler-transmon system, recovering effective two-qubit coefficients across a wide range of operating regimes, including parameter regions where Schrieffer-Wolff perturbation theory (SWPT) breaks down. This establishes a scalable, sample-efficient approach to Hamiltonian reduction and characterization for near-term quantum processors, with direct implications for calibration, control, and error mitigation.
23
Apr
2026
Pulse Shaping for Superconducting Qubits
High-fidelity control of superconducting qubits requires carefully shaped microwave pulses that account for multiple error channels. In this work, we present a pedagogical introduction
to pulse-shaping techniques for transmon qubits, aiming to provide a unified, accessible framework that integrates physical intuition for pulse design, analytical understanding of gate-level descriptions, and practical considerations of hardware. This article further aims to serve as a guide for students and early researchers entering superconducting quantum computing. We begin by examining simple pulse envelopes and their spectral properties, highlighting how finite bandwidth leads to leakage outside the computational subspace. These observations motivate the introduction of the derivative removal by adiabatic gate (DRAG) technique, which uses a quadrature component proportional to the pulse’s time derivative to suppress off-resonant excitations. We analyze the single-qubit case using the Magnus expansion, which provides a clear understanding of the order-by-order introduction of error channels. We discuss the practical hardware realities of control pulse generation, focusing on arbitrary waveform generators (AWG), local oscillators (LO), and IQ mixing. Common imperfections are discussed in terms of their impact on the effective pulse shape and qubit Hamiltonian. Finally, we extend the discussion to two-qubit operations, focusing on the cross-resonance gate and the emergence of effective interactions.
Bipartite entanglement under frequency comb pumping in parametric Josephson circuits
The creation of high-quality cluster states in superconducting microwave circuits is a relevant ingredient in continuous-variable quantum computing. Although large-scale cluster states
have been established in optical systems, dissipation prevents their direct applicability to the microwave realm. Recent improvements in superconducting parametric circuits, in particular Josephson parametric amplifiers (JPA) and traveling wave parametric amplifiers (TWPA), have permitted substantial progress in producing entangled states using microwave photons. In this paper, we examine experimentally and theoretically the effects of numerous parametric pump tones on the degree of two-mode squeezing in a quantum circuit and apply it to the JPA. We find that additional pumps diminish the initial two-mode correlations achieved with a single pump by redistributing it among a larger network of modes and by introducing entanglement with additional idler frequencies. Taking into account the actual heterodyne measurement conditions, the experimental results are consistent with theoretical expectations.