Revisiting the multi-mode rhombus circuit as a biased-noise qubit

In this work, we revisit the idea of using an interferometer of pairs of Josephson junctions as a protected rhombus qubit. Unlike in the original proposal, where the qubit states are encoded into odd and even parity charge states, here, we intentionally alter the energy of one of the junctions to investigate the soft version of the rhombus qubit. This approach allows us to directly probe the qubit transitions over several GHz and reduce the potential drawbacks of the interferometer-based protection. Away from a half flux quantum external field, the large shunting capacitors of the circuit ensure localized qubit states in different phase valleys, leading to a biased-noise qubit. In the realized circuit, we measure an average $T_1\approx500\,\mu$s relaxation time in the biased-noise regime (with a Ramsey dephasing time of $T^{R}_\varphi\approx90\,$ns), while an average $T_1\approx27\,\mu$s relaxation time at frustration (with $T^{R}_\varphi\approx670\,$ns). Our loss analysis on this multi-mode circuit indicates that at low frequencies, flux noise and quasiparticle tunneling limit the relaxation times, pointing toward the presence of an optimal operating regime of around a few GHz.