Flux noise in superconducting qubits and the gap states continuum

In the present study we investigate the selected local aspects of the metal-induced gap states (MIGSs), localized at the disordered metal-insulator interface, that were previously proposed to produce magnetic moments responsible for the flux noise in superconducting qubits. Our analysis attempts to supplement the available studies and provide new theoretical contribution toward their validation. In particular, we explicitly discuss the behavior of the MIGSs in the momentum space as a function of the local onsite energy deviation, that mimics the random potential disorder at the interface. It is found, that when the difference between the characteristic electronic potentials in the insulator increases, the corresponding MIGSs become more localized. This effect is associated with the increasing degree of the potential disorder that was earlier observed to produce highly localized MIGSs in the superconducting qubits. At the same time, the presented findings show that the disorder-induced localization of the MIGSs can be related directly to the decay characteristics of these states as well as to the bulk electronic properties of the insulator. As a result, our study reinforces plausibility of the previous corresponding investigations on the origin of the flux noise, but also allows to draw future directions toward their better verification.