Field-Based Formalism for Calculating Multi-Qubit Exchange Coupling Rates for Transmon Qubits

Superconducting qubits are one of the most mature platforms for quantum computing, but significant performance improvements are still needed. To improve the engineering of these systems, 3D full-wave computational electromagnetics analyses are increasingly being used. Unfortunately, existing analysis approaches often rely on full-wave simulations using eigenmode solvers that are typically cumbersome, not robust, and computationally prohibitive if devices with more than a few qubits are to be analyzed. To improve the characterization of superconducting circuits while circumventing these drawbacks, this work begins the development of an alternative framework that we illustrate in the context of evaluating the qubit-qubit exchange coupling rate between transmon qubits. This is a key design parameter that determines the entanglement rate for fast multi-qubit gate performance and also affects decoherence sources like qubit crosstalk. Our modeling framework uses a field-based formalism in the context of macroscopic quantum electrodynamics, which we use to show that the qubit-qubit exchange coupling rate can be related to the electromagnetic dyadic Green’s function linking the qubits together. We further show how the quantity involving the dyadic Green’s function can be related to the impedance response of the system that can be efficiently computed with classical computational electromagnetics tools. We demonstrate the validity and efficacy of this approach by simulating four practical multi-qubit superconducting circuits and evaluating their qubit-qubit exchange coupling rates. We validate our results against a 3D numerical diagonalization method and against experimental data where available. We also demonstrate the impact of the qubit-qubit exchange coupling rate on qubit crosstalk by simulating a multi-coupler device and identifying operating points where the qubit crosstalk becomes zero.