Login / Signup

A stress-induced source of phonon bursts and quasiparticle poisoning.

Robin Anthony-PetersenAndreas BiekertRaymond BunkerClarence L ChangYen-Yung ChangLuke ChaplinskyEleanor FascioneCaleb W FinkMaurice Garcia-SciveresRichard GermondWei GuoScott A HertelZiqing HongNoah KurinskyXinran LiJunsong LinMarharyta LisovenkoRupak MahapatraAdam MayerDaniel N McKinseySiddhant MehrotraNader MirabolfathiBrian NebloskyWilliam A PagePratyush K PatelBjoern PenningH Douglas PinckneyMark PlattMatt PyleMaggie ReedRoger K RomaniHadley Santana QueirozBernard SadouletBruno SerfassRyan SmithPeter SorensenBurkhant SuerfuAritoki SuzukiRyan UnderwoodVetri VelanGensheng WangYue WangSamuel L WatkinsMichael R WilliamsVolodymyr YefremenkoJianjie Zhang
Published in: Nature communications (2024)
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.
Keyphrases
  • stress induced
  • solid state
  • drinking water
  • diabetic rats
  • oxidative stress
  • single molecule