in the qubit electrodes, which temporarily reduce qubit coherence significantly. The many energetic phonons produced by a particle impact travel efficiently throughout the device substrate and generate quasiparticles with high probability, thus causing errors on a large fraction of the qubits in an array simultaneously. We describe a comprehensive strategy for the numerical simulation of the phonon and quasiparticle dynamics in the aftermath of an impact. We compare the simulations with experimental measurements of phonon-mediated QP poisoning and demonstrate that our modeling captures the spatial and temporal footprint of the QP poisoning for various configurations of phonon downconversion structures. We thus present a path forward for the operation of superconducting quantum processors in the presence of ionizing radiation.
Modeling Phonon-mediated Quasiparticle Poisoning in Superconducting Qubit Arrays
Correlated errors caused by ionizing radiation impacting superconducting qubit chips are problematic for quantum error correction. Such impacts generate quasiparticle (QP) excitations