Experimental demonstration of robustness under scaling errors for superadiabatic population transfer in a superconducting circuit

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates experimentally that superadiabatic population transfer in a superconducting circuit is highly robust against scaling errors, revealing a new plateau at high counterdiabatic pulse strengths that enhances transfer stability.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental validation of robustness features in superadiabatic population transfer in superconducting circuits, including a novel plateau phenomenon.

Findings

Transfer is resilient to amplitude scaling errors.

A new plateau appears at high counterdiabatic pulse strengths.

Superadiabatic process inherits robustness from adiabatic methods.

Abstract

We study experimentally and theoretically the transfer of population between the ground state and the second excited state in a transmon circuit by the use of superadiabatic stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (saSTIRAP). We show that the transfer is remarkably resilient against variations in the amplitudes of the pulses (scaling errors), thus demostrating that the superadiabatic process inherits certain robustness features from the adiabatic one. In particular, we put in evidence a new plateau that appears at high values of the counterdiabatic pulse strength, which goes beyond the usual framework of saSTIRAP.