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
05
Jun
2026
Suppression of Quasiparticle Poisoning to 10−11 Levels in Superconducting Qubits via Infrared Shielding
Quasiparticle poisoning bottlenecks superconducting qubits, limiting coherence and the scalability of quantum processors. In this work, we systematically investigate quasiparticle poisoning
in superconducting qubits under three infrared (IR) shielding configurations, ranging from a dedicated multi-layer design to a simplified implementation. By measuring quasiparticle-induced parity switching, we demonstrate a suppression of the switching rate by over four orders of magnitude via the implementation of improved shielding. In the best configuration, the rate decreases over time following cooldown and reaches 0.069Hz on day 34, corresponding to an anticipated quasiparticle density per Cooper pair of 1.88×10−11. To our knowledge, this represents the lowest quasiparticle density reported in the literature to date. The remaining quasiparticle population is likely dominated by sporadic phonon bursts stemming from mechanical stress release in the on-chip films, as well as from the surrounding environment. The effective qubit temperature follows the phonon bath down to 17mK, enabling initialization errors of ∼0.01% for 3GHz qubits. These results demonstrate that proper IR shielding and thermalization are essential for suppressing quasiparticle poisoning and enabling high-coherence, scalable superconducting qubit systems.
Contacting Josephson Junctions via Airbridges in Superconducting Circuits
Superconducting circuit devices require electrical interconnects between different circuit elements on the chip, for which conventional device architectures use a combination of two
structural elements: \textit{airbridges} to connect non-adjacent elements in the base layer, and \textit{bandages} to connect the electrodes forming the Josephson junctions to the base layer. Bandages introduce unwanted parasitic material interfaces and increase the manufacturing complexity. Here, we overcome the limitations imposed by \emph{bandages} by establishing \textit{all} electrical interconnects with airbridges of varying size fabricated in a single step. The airbridges show a high yield and mechanical stability over a wide range of sizes from 0.5μm to 4μm in width and from 5μm to 40μm in length, and show low loss when integrated in coplanar waveguide resonators and transmon qubits. Measured relaxation times up to more than 250μs in standard transmon geometries show that the process achieves high coherence while substantially easing and accelerating device fabrication.
26
Mai
2026
Toward Scalable Heterogeneous Quantum Networks: Microwave-Optical Transduction Across Platforms
The development of scalable quantum networks requires coherent interfaces capable of converting microwave photons used in superconducting quantum processors into optical photons suitable
for long-distance fiber transmission. This review surveys recent progress in microwave-to-optical quantum transduction across optomechanical, electro-optic, and magneto-optic platforms, with emphasis on conversion efficiency, bandwidth, added noise, and operating temperature. In addition to standard metrics, we propose the internal efficiency eta_in and the magnon decay rate kappa_m/2pi as normalized parameters that enable fairer comparison across heterogeneous implementations. Optomechanical systems achieve internal phonon-to-photon efficiencies of 93% with sub-quantum added noise of 0.25 quanta at millikelvin temperatures. Electro-optic devices based on LiNbO3 and AlN have advanced from room-temperature efficiencies below 1% to millikelvin systems with internal efficiencies approaching 99.5%, added noise as low as 0.16 quanta at 60 mK, and bandwidths extending to several tens of megahertz. Magneto-optic (optomagnonic) platforms exhibit the lowest efficiencies (typically 10−10 to 10−8), but offer intrinsic non-reciprocity and broadband magnonic operation, with emerging approaches based on topological heterostructures and magnon squeezing predicting enhancements up to 10−4. Optomechanical systems appear promising for high-fidelity quantum state transfer, electro-optic transducers for high-bandwidth coherent links, and magneto-optic devices for non-reciprocal network components. We discuss the fundamental trade-off between efficiency and added noise across all three platforms, and argue that heterogeneous microwave-optical transduction is emerging as a key enabling technology for distributed quantum computing and large-scale quantum networks.
20
Mai
2026
Fidelity-Aware Frequency Allocation and Transpilation Co-Design for Tunable Coupler Quantum Systems
Frequency crowding is a fundamental limitation in superconducting quantum architectures, particularly in tunable-coupler systems. We present a framework that explicitly models both
coherent spectator-induced errors and incoherent lifetime effects through an error budgeting approach. Using this model, we analyze how frequency crowding impacts gate fidelity as module size and connectivity scale, and formulate a constrained optimization problem to assign qubit and coupler frequencies under realistic separation and hardware constraints. We demonstrate scalable frequency allocation strategies that minimize spectator-induced errors. We further show that increasing qubit count and coupling density within a module leads to a fidelity-connectivity tradeoff. To explore the benefits at the system scale, we have developed a noise-aware transpilation approach called FINESSE, which minimizes error by selecting high-fidelity paths that satisfy connectivity via SWAP insertion while jointly optimizing downstream gate execution. We demonstrate this physics-informed architecture-transpilation co-design approach for a SNAIL-based third-order coupler that natively realizes the iSWAP‾‾‾‾‾‾‾√ basis with frequency aware gate fidelities. On SNAIL architectures, FINESSE achieves an average 8.9% reduction in log-infidelity cost and 6.8% reduction in circuit depth vs. SABRE. We also compare results on IBM Brisbane’s architecture.
19
Mai
2026
Photolithography-Only Fabrication of Transmons Using Double-Oblique Evaporation
We investigate a photolithography-only fabrication process for transmon Josephson junctions using a modified double-oblique evaporation geometry. Using a bilayer resist process and
Al shadow evaporation, we fabricate junction structures and confirm by optical and scanning electron microscopy that the resulting narrowed crossing region reaches a geometrical area on the order of 104 nm2, which lies in the size range relevant to qubit junction fabrication. Room-temperature resistance screening shows that the junction resistance falls within the target range for the present transmon design over a usable process window and exhibits a clear design dependence. We further implement fabricated junctions in transmon devices and evaluate them in a three-dimensional Al cavity at 20mK, where we observe basic transmon qubit operation with f01=4.865 GHz, T1∼9μs, and T∗2∼0.4μs. These results demonstrate the feasibility of realizing functional transmon devices in a photolithography-only process using double-oblique evaporation.
Unveiling Energetic Advantage in Superconducting Cat-Qubits Quantum Computation
Quantum computers are emerging as a promising new technology due to their ability to solve complex problems that exceed the capabilities of classical systems in terms of time. Among
various implementations, superconducting qubits have become the leading technology due to their scalability and compatibility with quantum error correction mechanisms. Although time has traditionally been the primary focus, energetic efficiency is becoming an increasingly important consideration, especially with the possibility of a quantum energetic advantage. In this article, the energy consumption of the Semiclassical Quantum Fourier Transform was analyzed on a superconducting quantum computing platform based on cat qubits. Quantum error correction mechanisms were studied and considered in the energy estimations. The results show how the energy consumption scales with the number of qubits and how the most relevant parameters required for qubit stabilization, gate implementation, and error correction codes contribute to the overall energy usage. An optimization method was developed to tune these parameters with the goal of minimizing energy consumption while maintaining qubit fidelities above a given threshold. Additionally, a comparative study with state-of-the-art classical computers indicates a potential quantum energetic advantage for systems with more than 26 qubits, assuming cryogenic systems operating at Carnot efficiency, with this energetic advantage arising before any computational advantage. This behavior persists even when realistic cryogenic systems and control electronics are taken into account.
18
Mai
2026
Dissipation-assisted preparation of Floquet-Laughlin states in superconducting circuits
Fractional Chern insulators (FCIs) are lattice analogs of fractional quantum Hall systems, where the interplay of strong interactions with a frustrated tunnelling kinetics leads to
the emergence of a gapped ground state with long-range entanglement and anyonic excitations. The highly correlated nature of such systems makes their adiabatic preparation challenging already beyond the minimal system size of two particles. Considering Floquet implementations of the bosonic Harper-Hofstadter-Hubbard model of few photons in superconducting circuits, we design protocols for the driven-dissipative stabilization of its FCI ground state at half filling via quantum bath engineering. Dissipation control is achieved through the coupling to driven leaky cavity modes, which realize a tuneable artificial environment having the Floquet-FCI as its approximate fixed point. For systems of two, three and six particles, we show numerically how the flexibility of the control scheme further allows for the detection of fractional quantum Hall signatures in the stabilized steady states, including bulk incompressibility, Hall response and the trapping of fractional charges. Our results provide a concrete pathway to dissipation-assisted preparation of strongly correlated states in quantum simulators.
Scalable Single-Step Generation of W States in 2D Superconducting Qubit Lattices
The reliable generation of multi-qubit entanglement is a prerequisite for large-scale quantum information technologies. In particular, W states are a valuable resource owing to their
resilience under local loss or measurement. Nevertheless, preparing these states with sequential two-qubit gates often requires substantial time overhead. By contrast, engineered simultaneous interactions enable fast entanglement generation, even in qubit systems with limited nearest-neighbour connectivity. Here, we demonstrate a set of fast and robust operations for coherently distributing a single excitation across a lattice of arbitrary size, thereby directly generating W states from initial product states. In 2D lattices, the excitation propagates along both directions simultaneously, such that the total entanglement time scales only with the largest dimension. We exploit this property to prepare a six-qubit W state in a 3×2 superconducting lattice within 99 ns, achieving a tomographic fidelity of 83.9±1.0%. We then extend the protocol to create entanglement across chains of up to seven qubits, with the largest W state generated in 264 ns with a fidelity of 79.6±1.3%.
15
Mai
2026
Measurement and Control of the Complex Berry Phase in a Quantum System
The Berry phase is a geometric phase acquired during adiabatic evolution over a closed loop in parameter space. It plays an essential role in geometric quantum gates and other phase-based
protocols. In non-Hermitian systems, the Berry phase is complex, introducing fundamentally new geometric effects, including state amplification. In this work, we report experimental measurement of both the real and imaginary components of a Berry phase in a fully quantum system using a superconducting transmon circuit with engineered dissipation. We also demonstrate the path-dependent effects of the imaginary part on the dissipation and its utility in the implementation of non-unitary quantum control. These findings establish a clear geometric distinction between the real and imaginary components of the Berry phase and experimentally confirm the unique adiabatic behavior of non-Hermitian quantum systems.
Interface Piezoelectric Loss in Superconducting Qubits
Dissipation remains a central obstacle to improving superconducting quantum circuits, yet the microscopic origins of loss in widely used materials platforms are not fully understood.
Here, we report the observation of interface piezoelectricity-induced dissipation in superconducting qubits fabricated on high-resistivity silicon. Our devices use a transmon qubit with a shunt capacitor that simultaneously serves as an interdigital transducer embedded in a surface acoustic wave resonator. By tuning the qubit transition into resonance with discrete mechanical modes, we observe up to a factor-of-two reduction in qubit lifetime, consistent with energy exchange between the qubit and mechanical modes mediated by piezoelectric coupling at the aluminum-silicon interface. Our findings provide direct evidence for interface piezoelectricity as a distinct loss channel in superconducting qubits. Combined with multiphysics simulations, these findings suggest that interface piezoelectric loss can dominate over loss from two-level systems at sufficiently high frequencies.