Parametrically Driven iSWAP Gate Using a Capacitively Shunted Double-Transmon Coupler at the Zero-Flux Sweet Spot

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a high-fidelity, parametrically driven iSWAP gate at zero flux bias using a capacitively shunted double-transmon coupler, improving robustness and performance in superconducting qubits.

Contribution

It introduces a simple flux-drive waveform for the iSWAP gate that avoids large amplitude pulses, achieving 99.92% fidelity with minimal hybridization effects.

Findings

Achieved 99.92% average gate fidelity for the iSWAP operation.

Demonstrated effective ZZ interaction suppression during the gate.

Validated the theoretical model with numerical simulations matching experimental results.

Abstract

A double-transmon coupler (DTC) enables a fast, high-fidelity CZ gate between two highly detuned, fixed-frequency transmon qubits. Moreover, a recently proposed capacitively shunted DTC (CSDTC) realizes a small residual ZZ interaction over a wide flux-bias range around zero flux, eliminating the necessity of static flux biasing while maintaining high CZ-gate fidelity. However, CZ gates with the DTC and CSDTC require baseband flux pulses with large amplitudes, which are vulnerable to pulse distortion and decoherence due to large qubit-coupler hybridization. To address these issues, we experimentally demonstrate a parametrically driven iSWAP gate operated at zero flux bias between highly detuned, fixed-frequency transmon qubits coupled through a CSDTC. Using a simple flux-drive waveform without predistortion, we realize an average gate fidelity of 99.92(2)% at a total gate time of 112 ns. The observed high-fidelity performance is consistent with small qubit-coupler hybridization and small effective ZZ interaction during the gate. Our numerical simulations reproduce the experimentally observed iSWAP interaction rate and effective ZZ interaction, demonstrating the applicability of the theoretical model not only to spectral information but also to time-domain dynamics such as gate operations. These results boost further progress in the research of superconducting quantum computers.