Synchronous Detection of Cosmic Rays and Correlated Errors in Superconducting Qubit Arrays

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Main Authors: Harrington, Patrick M., Li, Mingyu, Hays, Max, Van De Pontseele, Wouter, Mayer, Daniel, Pinckney, H. Douglas, Contipelli, Felipe, Gingras, Michael, Niedzielski, Bethany M., Stickler, Hannah, Yoder, Jonilyn L., Schwartz, Mollie E., Grover, Jeffrey A., Serniak, Kyle, Oliver, William D., Formaggio, Joseph A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Harrington, Patrick M.
Li, Mingyu
Hays, Max
Van De Pontseele, Wouter
Mayer, Daniel
Pinckney, H. Douglas
Contipelli, Felipe
Gingras, Michael
Niedzielski, Bethany M.
Stickler, Hannah
Yoder, Jonilyn L.
Schwartz, Mollie E.
Grover, Jeffrey A.
Serniak, Kyle
Oliver, William D.
Formaggio, Joseph A.
author_facet Harrington, Patrick M.
Li, Mingyu
Hays, Max
Van De Pontseele, Wouter
Mayer, Daniel
Pinckney, H. Douglas
Contipelli, Felipe
Gingras, Michael
Niedzielski, Bethany M.
Stickler, Hannah
Yoder, Jonilyn L.
Schwartz, Mollie E.
Grover, Jeffrey A.
Serniak, Kyle
Oliver, William D.
Formaggio, Joseph A.
contents Quantum information processing at scale will require sufficiently stable and long-lived qubits, likely enabled by error-correction codes. Several recent superconducting-qubit experiments, however, reported observing intermittent spatiotemporally correlated errors that would be problematic for conventional codes, with ionizing radiation being a likely cause. Here, we directly measured the cosmic-ray contribution to spatiotemporally correlated qubit errors. We accomplished this by synchronously monitoring cosmic-ray detectors and qubit energy-relaxation dynamics of 10 transmon qubits distributed across a 5x5x0.35 mm$^3$ silicon chip. Cosmic rays caused correlated errors at a rate of 1/(10 min), accounting for 17$\pm$1% of all such events. Our qubits responded to essentially all of the cosmic rays and their secondary particles incident on the chip, consistent with the independently measured arrival flux. Moreover, we observed that the landscape of the superconducting gap in proximity to the Josephson junctions dramatically impacts the qubit response to cosmic rays. Given the practical difficulties associated with shielding cosmic rays, our results indicate the importance of radiation hardening -- for example, superconducting gap engineering -- to the realization of robust quantum error correction.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_03208
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Synchronous Detection of Cosmic Rays and Correlated Errors in Superconducting Qubit Arrays
Harrington, Patrick M.
Li, Mingyu
Hays, Max
Van De Pontseele, Wouter
Mayer, Daniel
Pinckney, H. Douglas
Contipelli, Felipe
Gingras, Michael
Niedzielski, Bethany M.
Stickler, Hannah
Yoder, Jonilyn L.
Schwartz, Mollie E.
Grover, Jeffrey A.
Serniak, Kyle
Oliver, William D.
Formaggio, Joseph A.
Quantum Physics
High Energy Physics - Experiment
Nuclear Experiment
Instrumentation and Detectors
Quantum information processing at scale will require sufficiently stable and long-lived qubits, likely enabled by error-correction codes. Several recent superconducting-qubit experiments, however, reported observing intermittent spatiotemporally correlated errors that would be problematic for conventional codes, with ionizing radiation being a likely cause. Here, we directly measured the cosmic-ray contribution to spatiotemporally correlated qubit errors. We accomplished this by synchronously monitoring cosmic-ray detectors and qubit energy-relaxation dynamics of 10 transmon qubits distributed across a 5x5x0.35 mm$^3$ silicon chip. Cosmic rays caused correlated errors at a rate of 1/(10 min), accounting for 17$\pm$1% of all such events. Our qubits responded to essentially all of the cosmic rays and their secondary particles incident on the chip, consistent with the independently measured arrival flux. Moreover, we observed that the landscape of the superconducting gap in proximity to the Josephson junctions dramatically impacts the qubit response to cosmic rays. Given the practical difficulties associated with shielding cosmic rays, our results indicate the importance of radiation hardening -- for example, superconducting gap engineering -- to the realization of robust quantum error correction.
title Synchronous Detection of Cosmic Rays and Correlated Errors in Superconducting Qubit Arrays
topic Quantum Physics
High Energy Physics - Experiment
Nuclear Experiment
Instrumentation and Detectors
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03208