Qubit energy-relaxation statistics in the Bluefors quantum measurement system

Superconducting qubits have emerged as a highly versatile and useful platform for quantum technological applications [1]. Bluefors and Zurich Instruments have supported the growth of this field from the 2010s onwards by providing well-engineered and reliable measurement infrastructure [2]– [6]. Having a long and stable qubit lifetime is a critical system property. Therefore, considerable effort has already gone into measuring qubit energy-relaxation timescales and their fluctuations, see Refs. [7]–[10] among others. Accurately extracting the statistics of a quantum device requires users to perform time consuming measurements. One measurement challenge is that the detection of the state-dependent response of a superconducting resonator due to a dispersively-coupled qubit requires an inherently low signal level. Consequently, measurements must be performed using a microwave probe that contains only a few microwave photons. Improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by using near-quantum limited parametric amplifiers as well as the use of optimized signal processing enabled by efficient room temperature instrumentation help to reduce measurement time. An empirical observation for fixed frequency transmons from recent literature is that as the energy-relaxation time 𝑇𝑇1 increases, so do its natural temporal fluctuations [7], [10]. This necessitates many repeated measurements to understand the statistics (see for example, Ref. [10]). In addition, as state-of-the-art qubits increase in lifetime, longer measurement times are expected to obtain accurate statistics. As described below, the scaling of the widths of the qubit energy-relaxation distributions also reveal clues about the origin of the energy-relaxation.