Scientific Achievement

• Researchers in the Nanomahines program identified acceptors in silicon as a two-level system loss channel for superconducting qubits

Significance and Impact

• Atomic-scale defects called two-level systems limit the performance of superconducting quantum processors. However, their microscopic origins are not well-understood
• This work is the first microscopic description of a two-level system in a crystalline material, and points to necessary substrate purity requirements for quantum processors

Research Details

• Identified that acceptors in silicon act as atomic-scale piezoelectric transducers and cause qubit decoherence
• Measured superconducting resonator losses as a function boron concentration and identified acceptors as a dominant source of dielectric loss

Publication Details

Z. H. Zhang, K. Godeneli, J. He, M. Odeh, H. Zhou, S. Meesala , A. Sipahigil, Physical Review X (2024).

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.14.041022

Work was performed at California Institute of Technology.