A Stress Induced Source of Phonon Bursts and Quasiparticle Poisoning

The performance of superconducting qubits is degraded by a poorly characterized set of energy sources breaking the Cooper pairs responsible for superconductivity, creating a condition often called ``quasiparticle poisoning". Both superconducting qubits and low threshold dark matter calorimeters...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2024-08
Main Authors: Anthony-Petersen, Robin, Biekert, Andreas, Bunker, Raymond, Chang, Clarence L, Yen-Yung, Chang, Chaplinsky, Luke, Fascione, Eleanor, Fink, Caleb W, Garcia-Sciveres, Maurice, Germond, Richard, Guo, Wei, Hertel, Scott A, Hong, Ziqing, Kurinsky, Noah, Li, Xinran, Lin, Junsong, Lisovenko, Marharyta, Mahapatra, Rupak, Mayer, Adam, McKinsey, Daniel N, Mehrotra, Siddhant, Mirabolfathi, Nader, Neblosky, Brian, Page, William A, Patel, Pratyush K, Penning, Bjoern, Pinckney, H Douglas, Platt, Mark, Pyle, Matt, Reed, Maggie, Romani, Roger K, Hadley Santana Queiroz, Sadoulet, Bernard, Serfass, Bruno, Smith, Ryan, Sorensen, Peter F, Suerfu, Burkhant, Suzuki, Aritoki, Underwood, Ryan, Vetri Velan, Wang, Gensheng, Wang, Yue, Watkins, Samuel L, Williams, Michael R, Yefremenko, Volodymyr, Zhang, Jianjie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bursts
Cooper pairs
Crystals
Dark matter
Elementary excitations
Phonons
Poisoning
Qubits (quantum computing)
Stress relaxation
Superconductivity
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Summary:The performance of superconducting qubits is degraded by a poorly characterized set of energy sources breaking the Cooper pairs responsible for superconductivity, creating a condition often called ``quasiparticle poisoning". Both superconducting qubits and low threshold dark matter calorimeters have observed excess bursts of quasiparticles or phonons that decrease in rate with time. Here, we show that a silicon crystal glued to its holder exhibits a rate of low-energy phonon events that is more than two orders of magnitude larger than in a functionally identical crystal suspended from its holder in a low-stress state. The excess phonon event rate in the glued crystal decreases with time since cooldown, consistent with a source of phonon bursts which contributes to quasiparticle poisoning in quantum circuits and the low-energy events observed in cryogenic calorimeters. We argue that relaxation of thermally induced stress between the glue and crystal is the source of these events.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2208.02790