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Impact of ionizing radiation on superconducting qubit coherence
Open accessAbstract
Technologies that rely on quantum bits (qubits) require long coherence times and high-fidelity operations 1. Superconducting qubits are one of the leading platforms for achieving these objectives 2,3. However, the coherence of superconducting qubits is affected by the breaking of Cooper pairs of electrons 4-6. The experimentally observed density of the broken Cooper pairs, referred to as quasiparticles, is orders of magnitude higher than the value predicted at equilibrium by the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory of superconductivity 7-9. Previous work 10-12 has shown that infrared photons considerably increase the quasiparticle density, yet even in the best-isolated systems, it remains much higher 10 than expected, suggesting that another generation mechanism exists 13. Here we provide evidence that ionizing radiation from environmental radioactive materials and cosmic rays contributes to this observed difference. The effect of ionizing radiation leads to an elevated quasiparticle density, which we predict would ultimately limit the coherence times of superconducting qubits of the type measured here to milliseconds. We further demonstrate that radiation shielding reduces the flux of ionizing radiation and thereby increases the energy-relaxation time. Albeit a small effect for today's qubits, reducing or mitigating the impact of ionizing radiation will be critical for realizing fault-tolerant superconducting quantum computers.
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“This timescale is long compared to the typical qubit coherence times, and therefore will have a limited in uence on typical qubit T 1 measurements [4].”
From Resolving catastrophic error bursts from cosmic rays in large arrays of superconducting qubits (2022) · cites this paper as [4]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Vepsäläinen, A. P., Karamlou, A. H., Orrell, J. L., Dogra, A. S., Loer, B., Vasconcelos, F., Kim, D. K., Melville, A. J., Niedzielski, B. M., Yoder, J. L., Gustavsson, S., Formaggio, J. A., VanDevender, B. A., & Oliver, W. D.
- Affiliations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- MIT Lincoln Laboratory (US)
- Corresponding author
- Vepsäläinen, Antti P.
- Orrell, John L.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2020-08-26
- Volume
- 584
- Issue
- 7822
- Pages
- 551-556
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W3080931191
- Cited by
- 230
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 31 · 2025: 37 · 2024: 49 · 2023: 29 · 2022: 38 · 2021: 39 · 2020: 7
- FWCI
- 11.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2020-09-12)
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (acceptedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (FA8721-05-C-0002, 1720311)
- U.S. Department of Energy (DESC0019295, #FA8721-05-C-0002)
- Battelle
- Nuclear Physics
- Army Research Office (W911NF1810218, W911NF-14-1, W911NF-141-0682, W911NF)
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Quantum Information and Cryptography
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Superconducting and THz Device Technology
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Condensed Matter Physics › Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism
- Keywords
- superconducting qubits, qubit coherence, ionizing radiation, quasiparticle density, Cooper pair breaking, cosmic rays, environmental radioactivity, radiation shielding, energy relaxation time, superconducting quantum computing, fault-tolerant quantum computing
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