Dynamics of a dispersively coupled transmon qubit in the presence of a noise source embedded in the control line

TL;DR

This paper models the dynamics of a dispersively coupled transmon qubit affected by noise from an embedded resistor, providing a detailed quantum description and insights into decoherence mechanisms relevant for circuit QED.

Contribution

It derives a comprehensive Hamiltonian and Lindblad master equation for the qubit-resonator-resistor system, revealing how control line noise influences decoherence rates.

Findings

Decoherence rate is linked to the slowest eigenmode of the Liouvillian.

Increasing resonator dissipation beyond the dispersive strong regime improves decoherence rates.

The model accurately predicts qubit decoherence in realistic circuit QED setups.

Abstract

We describe transmon qubit dynamics in the presence of noise introduced by an impedance-matched resistor ($50\,\mathrm{\Omega}$) that is embedded in the qubit control line. To obtain the time evolution, we rigorously derive the circuit Hamiltonian of the qubit, readout resonator and resistor by describing the latter as an infinite collection of bosonic modes through the Caldeira-Leggett model. Starting from this Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian with inductive coupling to the remote bath comprised of the resistor, we consistently obtain the Lindblad master equation for the qubit and resonator in the dispersive regime. We exploit the underlying symmetries of the master equation to transform the Liouvillian superoperator into a block diagonal matrix. The block diagonalization method reveals that the rate of exponential decoherence of the qubit is well-captured by the slowest decaying eigenmode of a single block of the Liouvillian superoperator, which can be easily computed. The model captures the often used dispersive strong limit approximation of the qubit decoherence rate being linearly proportional to the number of thermal photons in the readout resonator but predicts remarkably better decoherence rates when the dissipation rate of the resonator is increased beyond the dispersive strong regime. Our work provides a full quantitative description of the contribution to the qubit decoherence rate coming from the control line in chips that are currently employed in circuit QED laboratories, and suggests different possible ways to reduce this source of noise.