Charge Parity Rates in Transmon Qubits with Different Shunting Capacitors

The presence of non-equilibrium quasiparticles in superconducting resonators and qubits operating at millikelvin temperature has been known for decades. One metric for the number of quasiparticles affecting qubits is the rate of single-electron change in charge on the qubit island (i.e. the charge parity rate). Here, we have utilized a Ramsey-like pulse sequence to monitor changes in the parity states of five transmon qubits. The five qubits have shunting capacitors with two different geometries and fabricated from both Al and Ta. The charge parity rate differs by a factor of two for the two transmon designs studied here but does not depend on the material of the shunting capacitor. The underlying mechanism of the source of parity switching is further investigated in one of the qubit devices by increasing the quasiparticle trapping rate using induced vortices in the electrodes of the device. The charge parity rate exhibited a weak dependence on the quasiparticle trapping rate, indicating that the main source of charge parity events is from the production of quasiparticles across the Josephson junction. To estimate this source of quasiparticle production, we simulate and estimate pair-breaking photon absorption rates for our two qubit geometries and find a similar factor of two in the absorption rate for a background blackbody radiation temperature of T∗∼ 350 mK.