{"paper":{"title":"Saving superconducting quantum processors from qubit decay and correlated errors generated by gamma and cosmic rays","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cond-mat.supr-con"],"primary_cat":"quant-ph","authors_text":"John M. Martinis","submitted_at":"2020-12-11T05:44:43Z","abstract_excerpt":"Error-corrected quantum computers can only work if errors are small and uncorrelated. Here I show how cosmic rays or stray background radiation affects superconducting qubits by modeling the phonon to electron/quasiparticle down-conversion physics. For present designs, the model predicts about 57\\% of the radiation energy breaks Cooper pairs into quasiparticles, which then vigorously suppress the qubit energy relaxation time ($T_1 \\sim$ 160 ns) over a large area (cm) and for a long time (ms). Such large and correlated decay kills error correction. Using this quantitative model, I show how this"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2012.06137","kind":"arxiv","version":3},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2012.06137/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}