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Inherent flux crosstalk and coupler-driven single-qubit gates in superconducting circuits

Balázs Gulácsi* and Guido Burkard

  • *Contact author: balazs.gulacsi@uni-konstanz.de
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Phys. Rev. Applied 26, 044056 – Published 20 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/q2j3-mftf

Abstract

Crosstalk refers to unwanted qubit addressing. This is particularly detrimental when scaling up quantum information systems because unintended interactions limit their overall performance. For superconducting qubits, tunable couplings and frequency tunability achieved through externally applied magnetic fluxes enable high-fidelity entangling gates; however, they also introduce crosstalk through unintended flux coupling. In this work, we investigate the impact of time-dependent external magnetic fluxes in quantized circuits on superconducting qubit couplings. We find that nontrivial cross-voltage driving emerges between capacitively linked qubits when the magnetic flux threading the superconducting loop of a qubit varies in time, in a manner analogous to Faraday’s law of induction. Crucially, we show that this effect enables fast single-qubit control through the coupler element in standard tunable-coupler architectures, potentially eliminating the need for individual microwave XY control lines.

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Phys. Rev. Applied 26, 044056– Published 20 October, 2026
  • Received 9 June 2026
  • Accepted 21 September 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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