Parity switching and decoherence by quasiparticles in single-junction transmons

The transmon superconducting qubit is being intensely investigated as a promising approach for the physical implementation of quantum information processing, and high quality factors of order 106 have been achieved both in two- and three-dimensional architectures. These high quality factors enable detailed investigations of decoherence mechanisms. An intrinsic decoherence process originates from the coupling between the qubit degree of freedom and the quasiparticles that tunnel across Josephson junctions. In a transmon, tunneling of a single quasiparticle is associated with a change in parity. Here we present the theory of the parity-switching rates in single-junction transmons and compare it with recent measurements. We also show that parity switching can have an important role in limiting the coherence time.