Investigating the loss mechanisms of driven fluxonium circuits

The fluxonium qubit has garnered significant interest recently due to its high gate fidelities and strongly anharmonic spectrum. These valuable features have resulted in the fluxonium being proposed as the basis for a quantum processor, for use in transducing between microwave and optical signals, and as a nonlinear element for manipulating long-lifetime linear cavities. A necessary requirement for using the fluxonium in such schemes is a better understanding of the behavior of the fluxonium under the application of microwave drives at different frequencies. Here we review previous work on fluxonium circuits and report on our efforts, both in experiment and theory, to map out the dynamics and loss mechanisms of a driven fluxonium-based circuit. We first focus on the driven behavior of single-fluxonium circuits before moving on to the benefits that are offered in driven multiple-fluxonium devices.