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Engineering high-coherence superconducting qubits

Nature Reviews Materials volume 6, pages 875–891 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Advances in materials science and engineering have played a central role in the development of classical computers and will undoubtedly be critical in propelling the maturation of quantum information technologies. In approaches to quantum computation based on superconducting circuits, as one goes from bulk materials to functional devices, amorphous films and non-equilibrium excitations — electronic and phononic — are introduced, leading to dissipation and fluctuations that limit the computational power of state-of-the-art qubits and processors. In this Review, the major sources of decoherence in superconducting qubits are identified through an exploration of seminal qubit and resonator experiments. The proposed microscopic mechanisms associated with these imperfections are summarized, and directions for future research are discussed. The trade-offs between simple qubit primitives based on a single Josephson tunnel junction and more complex designs that use additional circuit elements, or new junction modalities, to reduce sensitivity to local noise sources are discussed, particularly in the context of materials optimization strategies for each architecture.

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Fig. 1: Superconducting qubits.
Fig. 2: Qubit types.
Fig. 3: Sources of decoherence.
Fig. 4: TLS defects.
Fig. 5: Experimental evidence for TLS defects.
Fig. 6: Quasiparticles.
Fig. 7: Noise-protected circuits.
Fig. 8: Novel superconducting qubits.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Testbed Program, Office of Science of the US Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231. G. Catelani, J. Clarke, M. Devoret, L. Faoro, L. Glazman, L. Ioffe, A. Jordan, C. Müller, W. Oliver and J. Preskill provided critical comments on the manuscript. L. Nguyen provided the numerical data used in Fig. 2. J. M. Kreikebaum provided the chip photograph used in Fig. 3.

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  1. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Irfan Siddiqi

  2. Computational Research and Materials Sciences Divisions, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Irfan Siddiqi

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Siddiqi, I. Engineering high-coherence superconducting qubits. Nat Rev Mater 6, 875–891 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-021-00370-4

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