Characterizing Crosstalk of Superconducting Transmon Processors
Andreas Ketterer, Thomas Wellens
Abstract
Currently available quantum computing hardware based on superconducting transmon architectures realizes networks of hundreds of qubits with the possibility of controlled nearest-neighbor interactions. However, the inherent noise and decoherence effects of such quantum chips considerably alter basic gate operations and lead to imperfect outputs of the targeted quantum computations. In this work, we focus on the characterization of crosstalk effects, which manifest themselves in correlations between simultaneously executed quantum gates on neighboring qubits. After a short explanation of the physical origin of such correlations, we show how to efficiently and systematically characterize the magnitude of such crosstalk effects on an entire quantum chip using the randomized benchmarking protocol. We demonstrate the introduced protocol by running it on real quantum hardware provided by IBM and observe significant alterations in gate fidelities due to crosstalk. Lastly, based on the gained information, we propose more accurate means to simulate noisy quantum hardware by devising a crosstalk-aware noise model.