Bifluxon: Fluxon-Parity-Protected Superconducting Qubit

We have developed and characterized a symmetry-protected superconducting qubit that offers simultaneous exponential suppression of energy decay from charge and flux noise, and dephasing from flux noise. The qubit consists of a Cooper-pair box (CPB) shunted by a superinductor, thus forming a superconducting loop. Provided the offset charge on the CPB island is an odd number of electrons, the qubit potential corresponds to that of a cosϕ/2 Josephson element, preserving the parity of fluxons in the loop via Aharonov-Casher interference. In this regime, the logical-state wavefunctions reside in disjoint regions of phase space, thereby ensuring the protection against energy decay. By switching the protection on, we observed a ten-fold increase of the decay time, reaching up to 100μs. Though the qubit is sensitive to charge noise, the sensitivity is much reduced in comparison with the charge qubit, and the charge-noise-induced dephasing time of the current device exceeds 1μs. Implementation of the full dephasing protection can be achieved in the next-generation devices by combining several cosϕ/2 Josephson elements in a small array.