Junction-Intrinsic Dissipation in Hybrid Superconductor-Semiconductor Gatemon Qubits

  1. Zhenhai Sun,
  2. David Feldstein-Bofill,
  3. Ksenia Shagalov,
  4. Amalie T. J. Paulsen,
  5. Casper Wied,
  6. Shikhar Singh,
  7. Brian D. Isakov,
  8. Jacob Hastrup,
  9. Christopher W. Warren,
  10. Svend Krøjer,
  11. Anders Kringhøj,
  12. András Gyenis,
  13. and Morten Kjaergaard
Superconducting transmon qubits based on hybrid superconductor-semiconductor Josephson junctions (gatemons) offer gate tunability, but their relaxation times remain well below those
of state-of-the-art transmons, and the origin of this discrepancy is not fully understood. Here, we co-fabricate gatemons and SIS-junction transmons with nominally identical circuit layouts, gate dielectrics, and control lines, so that the Josephson element is the only intentional distinction. Across multiple chips, transmons in this architecture reach relaxation times in the tens of microseconds, whereas gatemons saturate in the few-microsecond range. Using the transmons as on-chip references, we construct a loss budget including Purcell decay, spontaneous emission through the control line, and internal dielectric loss, and find that the corresponding T1 limits exceed all measured gatemon values by more than an order of magnitude. Temperature-dependent T1 measurements follow a common quasiparticle-activation model and yield similar superconducting gaps for S-Sm-S and SIS junctions, indicating that the reduced gatemon coherence is dominated by additional temperature-independent, junction-intrinsic dissipation.

Higher Josephson harmonics in a tunable double-junction transmon qubit

  1. Ksenia Shagalov,
  2. David Feldstein-Bofill,
  3. Leo Uhre Jakobsen,
  4. Zhenhai Sun,
  5. Casper Wied,
  6. Amalie T. J. Paulsen,
  7. Johann Bock Severin,
  8. Malthe A. Marciniak,
  9. Clinton A. Potts,
  10. Anders Kringhøj,
  11. Jacob Hastrup,
  12. Karsten Flensberg,
  13. Svend Krøjer,
  14. and Morten Kjaergaard
Tunable Josephson harmonics open up for new qubit design. We demonstrate a superconducting circuit element with a tunnel junction in series with a SQUID loop, yielding a highly magnetic-flux
tunable harmonic content of the Josephson potential. We analyze spectroscopy of the first four qubit transitions with a circuit model which includes the internal mode, revealing a second harmonic up to ∼10% of the fundamental harmonic. Interestingly, a sweet spot where the dispersive shift vanishes is achieved by balancing the dispersive couplings to the internal and qubit modes. The highly tunable set-up provides a route toward protected qubits, and customizable nonlinear microwave devices.