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Serniak, Kyle (ORCID:0000000334699166)

Publications and source records attributed to Serniak, Kyle (ORCID:0000000334699166).

Qubit-state purity oscillations from anisotropic transverse noise

We explore the dynamics of qubit-state purity in the presence of transverse noise that is anisotropically distributed in the Bloch-sphere X Y plane. We perform Ramsey experiments with noise injected along a fixed laboratory-frame axis and observe oscillations in the purity at twice the qubit frequency arising from the intrinsic qubit Larmor precession. We probe the oscillation dependence on the noise anisotropy, orientation, and power spectral density, using a low-frequency fluxonium qubit. Our results elucidate the impact of transverse noise anisotropy on qubit decoherence and may be useful for disentangling charge and flux noise in superconducting quantum circuits. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

Rower, David A. (ORCID:0000000328455616)↗

Dephasing in Fluxonium Qubits from Coherent Quantum Phase Slips

Phase slips occur across all Josephson junctions (JJs) at a rate that increases with the impedance of the junction. In superconducting qubits composed of JJ-array superinductors—such as fluxonium—phase slips in the array can lead to decoherence. In particular, phase-slip processes at the individual array junctions can coherently interfere, each with an Aharonov-Casher phase that depends on the offset charges of the array islands. These coherent quantum phase slips (CQPS) perturbatively modify the qubit frequency, and therefore charge noise on the array islands will lead to dephasing. By varying the impedance of the array junctions, we design a set of fluxonium qubits in which the expected phase-slip rate within the JJ array changes by several orders of magnitude. We characterize the coherence times of these qubits and demonstrate that the scaling of CQPS-induced dephasing rates agrees with our theoretical model. Furthermore, we perform noise spectroscopy of two qubits in regimes dominated by either CQPS or flux noise. We find that the noise power spectrum associated with CQPS dephasing appears to be featureless at low frequencies and not 1 / f . Numerical simulations indicate that this behavior is consistent with charge noise generated by charge-parity fluctuations within the array. Our findings broadly inform JJ-array-design trade-offs, relevant for the numerous superconducting-qubit designs employing JJ-array superinductors. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Physics↗