Kurtis Geerlings

Superconducting qubits and resonators with quality factors exceeding 10^7 are of great interest for quantum information processing applications. The improvement of present devices necessarily involves the consideration of participation ratios, which budget the influence of each physical component in the total energy decay rate. Experiments on compact resonators in which participation ratios were varied has demonstrated the validity of this method, yielding a two-fold improvement in quality factor. Similar experiments on compact transmon qubit devices led to a three-fold improvement over previous transmons, validating the method of participation ratios for qubits as well. Through the use of a 3D cavity, a further minimization of the participation of surface components combined with the removal of unnecessary components, produced an additional ten-fold increase in coherence times. Finally, the fluxonium qubit was redesigned in a similar minimalist environment with an improved superinductance, thus combining the advantages of the 3D architecture with the natural insensitivity to dissipation of the fluxonium, resulting in another ten-fold increase in relaxation times. This large increase in relaxation and coherence times enables experiments that were previously impossible, thus preparing the field of quantum information to advance on other fronts.