Optimized cross-resonance gate for coupled transmon systems

The cross-resonant gate is an entangling gate for fixed frequency superconducting qubits introduced for untunable qubits. While being simple and extensible, it suffers from long duration and limited fidelity. Using two different optimal control algorithms, we probe the quantum speed limit for a CNOT gate in this system. We show that the ability to approach this limit depends strongly on the ansatz used to describe the optimal control pulse. A piecewise constant ansatz with a single carrier leads to an experimentally feasible pulse shape, shorter than the one currently used in experiments, but that remains relatively far from the speed limit. On the other hand, an ansatz based on the two dominant frequencies involved in the optimal control problem allows to generate an optimal solution more than twice as fast, in under 30ns. This comes close to the theoretical quantum speed limit, which we estimate at 15ns for typical circuit-QED parameters, which is more than an order of magnitude faster than current experimental microwave-driven realizations, and more than twice as fast as tunable direct-coupling experimental realizations.