For practical superconducting quantum processors, orders of magnitude improvement in coherence is required, motivating efforts to optimize hardware design and explore new materials.Among the latter, the coherence of superconducting transmon qubits has been shown to improve by forming the qubit capacitor pads from α-tantalum, avoiding the meta-stable β-phase that forms when depositing tantalum at room temperature, and has been previously identified to be a source of microwave losses. In this work, we show lumped element resonators containing β-phase tantalum in the form of inclusions near the metal-substrate interface with internal quality factors (Qi) up to (5.0±2.5)×106 in the single photon regime. They outperform resonators with no sign of the β-phase in x-ray diffraction and thermal quasi-particle loss. Our results indicate that small concentrations of β-phase can be beneficial, enhancing critical magnetic fields and potentially, for improving coherence in tantalum based superconducting circuits.
Dissipative cat-qubits are a promising architecture for quantum processors due to their built-in quantum error correction. By leveraging two-photon stabilization, they achieve an exponentiallysuppressed bit-flip error rate as the distance in phase-space between their basis states increases, incurring only a linear increase in phase-flip rate. This property substantially reduces the number of qubits required for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here, we implement a squeezing deformation of the cat qubit basis states, further extending the bit-flip time while minimally affecting the phase-flip rate. We demonstrate a steep reduction in the bit-flip error rate with increasing mean photon number, characterized by a scaling exponent γ=4.3, rising by a factor of 74 per added photon. Specifically, we measure bit-flip times of 22 seconds for a phase-flip time of 1.3 μs in a squeezed cat qubit with an average photon number n¯=4.1, a 160-fold improvement in bit-flip time compared to a standard cat. Moreover, we demonstrate a two-fold reduction in Z-gate infidelity, with an estimated phase-flip probability of ϵX=0.085 and a bit-flip probability of ϵZ=2.65⋅10−9 which confirms the gate bias-preserving property. This simple yet effective technique enhances cat qubit performances without requiring design modification, moving multi-cat architectures closer to fault-tolerant quantum computation.
DC-voltage-biased Josephson junctions have been recently employed in superconducting circuits for Hamiltonian engineering, demonstrating microwave amplification, single photon sourcesand entangled photon generation. Compared to more conventional approaches based on parametric pumps, this solution typically enables larger interaction strengths. In the context of quantum information, a two-to-one photon interaction can stabilize cat qubits, where bit-flip errors are exponentially suppressed, promising significant resource savings for quantum error correction. This work investigates how the DC bias approach to Hamiltonian engineering can benefit cat qubits. We find a simple circuit design that is predicted to showcase a two-to-one photon exchange rate larger than that of the parametric pump-based implementation while dynamically averaging typically resonant parasitic terms such as Kerr and cross Kerr. In addition to addressing qubit stabilization, we propose to use injection locking with a cat-qubit adapted frequency filter to prevent long-term drifts of the cat qubit angle associated to DC voltage noise. The whole scheme is simulated without rotating-wave approximations, highlighting for the first time the amplitude of related oscillatory effects in cat-qubit stabilization schemes. This study lays the groundwork for the experimental realization of such a circuit.
Cat qubits, for which logical |0⟩ and |1⟩ are coherent states |±α⟩ of a harmonic mode, offer a promising route towards quantum error correction. Using dissipation to our advantageso that photon pairs of the harmonic mode are exchanged with single photons of its environment, it is possible to stabilize the logical states and exponentially increase the bit-flip time of the cat qubit with the photon number |α|2. Large two-photon dissipation rate κ2 ensures fast qubit manipulation and short error correction cycles, which are instrumental to correct the remaining phase-flip errors in a repetition code of cat qubits. Here we introduce and operate an autoparametric superconducting circuit that couples a mode containing the cat qubit to a lossy mode whose frequency is set at twice that of the cat mode. This passive coupling does not require a parametric pump and reaches a rate κ2/2π≈2 MHz. With such a strong two-photon dissipation, bit-flip errors of the autoparametric cat qubit are prevented for a characteristic time up to 0.3 s with only a mild impact on phase-flip errors. Besides, we illustrate how the phase of a quantum superposition between |α⟩ and |−α⟩ can be arbitrarily changed by driving the harmonic mode while keeping the engineered dissipation active.
Half a century after its discovery, the Josephson junction has become the most important nonlinear quantum electronic component at our disposal. It has helped reshaping the SI systemaround quantum effects and is used in scores of quantum devices. By itself, the use of Josephson junctions in the Volt metrology seems to imply an exquisite understanding of the component in every aspects. Yet, surprisingly, there have been long-standing subtle issues regarding the modeling of the interaction of a junction with its electromagnetic environment which has generated broadly accepted misconceptions and paradoxical predictions. Here, we invalidate experimentally one such prediction, namely that a Josephson junction connected to a resistor becomes insulating beyond a given value of the resistance, due to a dissipative quantum phase transition. Our work clarifies how this key quantum component should be modeled and resolves contradictions in the theory.