Operating a Quantum Processor with Material Defects

A challenge in operating a quantum processor is mitigating computational errors from material two-level-system defects. Defects cause qubit-performance metrics to fluctuate in frequency, time, and between nominally identical qubits [1]. In frequency-tunable qubit architectures, it is possible to mitigate defect-related performance fluctuations in-situ by judiciously picking qubit operating frequencies. The defect avoidance problem thus maps to an optimization problem with a high-dimensional, non-convex, and time-dependent objective whose parameters are defined by defects’ physical properties. In this talk, I will discuss recent research towards understanding defect properties, the defect avoidance problem, and related benchmarks.

[1] P. V. Klimov et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 090502 (2018).