Epitaxial titanium nitride microwave resonators: Structural, chemical, electrical, and microwave properties

  1. Ran Gao,
  2. Wenlong Yu,
  3. Hao Deng,
  4. Hsiang-Sheng Ku,
  5. Zhisheng Li,
  6. Minghua Wang,
  7. Xiaohe Miao,
  8. Yue Lin,
  9. and Chunqing Deng
Titanium nitride is an attractive material for a range of superconducting quantum-circuit applications owing to its low microwave losses, high surface inductance, and chemical stability.
The physical properties and device performance, nevertheless, depend strongly on the quality of the materials. Here we focus on the highly crystalline and epitaxial titanium nitride thin films deposited on sapphire substrates using magnetron sputtering at an intermediate temperature (300∘C). We perform a set of systematic and comprehensive material characterization to thoroughly understand the structural, chemical, and transport properties. Microwave losses at low temperatures are studied using patterned microwave resonators, where the best internal quality factor in the single-photon regime is measured to be 3.3×106, and >1.0×107 in the high-power regime. Adjusted with the material filling factor of the resonators, the microwave loss-tangent here compares well with the previously reported best values for superconducting resonators. This work lays the foundation of using epitaxial titanium nitride for low-loss superconducting quantum circuits.

Observation of Floquet states in a strongly driven artificial atom

  1. Chunqing Deng,
  2. Jean-Luc Orgiazzi,
  3. Feiruo Shen,
  4. Sahel Ashhab,
  5. and Adrian Lupascu
We present experiments on the driven dynamics of a two-level superconducting artificial atom. The driving strength reaches 4.78 GHz, significantly exceeding the transition frequency
of 2.288 GHz. The observed dynamics is described in terms of quasienergies and quasienergy states, in agreement with Floquet theory. In addition, we observe the role of pulse shaping in the dynamics, as determined by non-adiabatic transitions between Floquet states, and we implement subnanosecond single-qubit operations. These results pave the way to quantum control using strong driving with applications in quantum technologies.