Geodesic-based optimal control for leakage suppression in superconducting qubits
Abstract
Superconducting qubits are often based on the first two energy levels of a physical anharmonic LC oscillator. Since the anharmonicity of such systems is usually much lower than the involved energy gaps, population can easily leak to higher energy states. This is what characterizes leakage errors, and it can have multiple sources: from coherent error induced by the control platform to incoherent thermal dissipation. In this work, we adapt an optimal control method based on sub-Riemannian geodesic search in the unitary group for a system consisting of two superconducting qubits with leakage levels. We use the Rx(π/2) rotation for single-qubit operation analysis, and the iSWAP operation for two-qubit analysis. For the former, we find considerable performance improvement in average gate fidelity as well as in the reduction of leakage errors when comparing the obtained optimal pulses with Gaussian and DRAG pulses, especially for short duration pulses. For the iSWAP gate, although leakage error remains roughly the same, we manage to obtain considerably higher fidelities with the cost of requiring a slightly longer time evolution.
Related
- A Novel q-Derivative Framework with Applications to q-Deformed Thermodynamics and Leakage Suppression in Superconducting Qubits
- Analytic leakage suppression with a single control field: fast two-qubit gates with tunable couplers
- Parametric DRAG for leakage-suppressed exchange gates in superconducting qubits
- Geodesic completeness and photon propagation in a superconducting T-duality black hole
- Half-Integer Spectral Zeros for Leakage Suppression in Fast Transmon Pulses
BibTeX
@misc{silva2026geodesicbased,
title = {{Geodesic-based optimal control for leakage suppression in superconducting qubits}},
author = {Adonai Hilário da Silva and Tanmoy Pandit and Francesco Cosco},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.09666},
eprint = {2610.09666},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09666},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Geodesic-based optimal control for leakage suppression in superconducting qubits
AU - Adonai Hilário da Silva
AU - Tanmoy Pandit
AU - Francesco Cosco
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/07
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.09666
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09666
AB - Superconducting qubits are often based on the first two energy levels of a physical anharmonic LC oscillator. Since the anharmonicity of such systems is usually much lower than the involved energy gaps, population can easily leak to higher energy states. This is what characterizes leakage errors, and it can have multiple sources: from coherent error induced by the control platform to incoherent thermal dissipation. In this work, we adapt an optimal control method based on sub-Riemannian geodesic search in the unitary group for a system consisting of two superconducting qubits with leakage levels. We use the R_x(π/2) rotation for single-qubit operation analysis, and the iSWAP operation for two-qubit analysis. For the former, we find considerable performance improvement in average gate fidelity as well as in the reduction of leakage errors when comparing the obtained optimal pulses with Gaussian and DRAG pulses, especially for short duration pulses. For the iSWAP gate, although leakage error remains roughly the same, we manage to obtain considerably higher fidelities with the cost of requiring a slightly longer time evolution.
ER -