- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review B

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Seismometry of radiation-induced quasiparticle bursts in superconducting devices

Francesco Valenti1,*,†, Anil Murani1,*,‡, Patrick Paluch1,2, Robert Gartmann3, Lukas Scheller3, Richard Weller3, Robert Kruk4, Thomas Reisinger1, Luis Ardila-Perez3 et al.

Ioan M. Pop1,2,5,§

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Present address: IBM Quantum, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, 10598 New York, USA.
  • ‡Present address: Alice & Bob, 75015 Paris, France.
  • §Contact author: ioan.pop@kit.edu
PDF

Phys. Rev. B 113, 174504 – Published 12 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/xmyw-yc9h

Abstract

We perform nanosecond-resolution multiplexed readout on six same-chip superconducting microwave resonators. This allows us to pinpoint the position of ionizing radiation impacts on the chip by measuring the differential time-of-flight of the generated phonons, inducing correlated errors in the device, thereby implementing an on-chip seismic array. We correlate the phase response of each resonator—a proxy for the absorbed energy—to the distance from the impact point to uncover a millimetric characteristic length for the phonon-mediated radiation poisoning.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (37)

  1. T. Thorbeck, A. Eddins, I. Lauer, D. T. McClure, and M. Carroll, Two-level-system dynamics in a superconducting qubit due to background ionizing radiation, PRX Quantum 4, 020356 (2023).
  2. A. P. Vepsäläinen, A. H. Karamlou, J. L. Orrell, A. S. Dogra, B. Loer, F. Vasconcelos, D. K. Kim, A. J. Melville, B. M. Niedzielski, and J. L. Yoder, Impact of ionizing radiation on superconducting qubit coherence, Nature (London) 584, 551 (2020).
  3. L. Cardani, F. Valenti, N. Casali, G. Catelani, T. Charpentier, M. Clemenza, I. Colantoni, A. Cruciani, G. D'Imperio, L. Gironi, et al., Reducing the impact of radioactivity on quantum circuits in a deep-underground facility, Nat. Commun. 12, 2733 (2021).
  4. C. Larson, E. Yelton, K. Dodge, K. Okubo, J. Batarekh, V. Iaia, N. Kurinsky, and B. L. T. Plourde, Quasiparticle poisoning of superconducting qubits with active gamma irradiation, PRX Quantum 6, 030339 (2025).
  5. L. J. Swenson, A. Cruciani, A. Benoit, M. Roesch, C. S. Yung, A. Bideaud, and A. Monfardini, High-speed phonon imaging using frequency-multiplexed kinetic inductance detectors, Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 263511 (2010).
  6. K. Karatsu, A. Endo, J. Bueno, P. J. de Visser, R. Barends, D. J. Thoen, V. Murugesan, N. Tomita, and J. J. A. Baselmans, Mitigation of cosmic ray effect on microwave kinetic inductance detector arrays, Appl. Phys. Lett. 114, 032601 (2019).
  7. C. D. Wilen, S. Abdullah, N. A. Kurinsky, C. Stanford, L. Cardani, G. D'Imperio, C. Tomei, L. Faoro, L. B. Ioffe, C. H. Liu, et al., Correlated charge noise and relaxation errors in superconducting qubits, Nature (London) 594, 369 (2021).
  8. M. McEwen, L. Faoro, K. Arya, A. Dunsworth, T. Huang, S. Kim, B. Burkett, A. Fowler, F. Arute, J. C. Bardin, et al., Resolving catastrophic error bursts from cosmic rays in large arrays of superconducting qubits, Nat. Phys. 18, 107 (2022).
  9. E. Yelton, C. P. Larson, V. Iaia, K. Dodge, G. La Magna, P. G. Baity, I. V. Pechenezhskiy, R. McDermott, N. A. Kurinsky, G. Catelani, and B. L. T. Plourde, Modeling phonon-mediated quasiparticle poisoning in superconducting qubit arrays, Phys. Rev. B 110, 024519 (2024).
  10. F. Henriques, F. Valenti, T. Charpentier, M. Lagoin, C. Gouriou, M. Martínez, L. Cardani, M. Vignati, L. Grünhaupt, D. Gusenkova, et al., Phonon traps reduce the quasiparticle density in superconducting circuits, Appl. Phys. Lett. 115, 212601 (2019).
  11. J. M. Martinis, Saving superconducting quantum processors from qubit decay and correlated errors generated by gamma and cosmic rays, npj Quantum Inf. 7, 90 (2021).
  12. M. McEwen, K. C. Miao, J. Atalaya, A. Bilmes, A. Crook, J. Bovaird, J. M. Kreikebaum, N. Zobrist, E. Jeffrey, B. Ying, et al., Resisting high-energy impact events through gap engineering in superconducting qubit arrays, Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 240601 (2024).
  13. E. Bertoldo, V. Pérez Sánchez, M. Martínez, M. Martínez, H. Khalife, and P. Forn-Díaz, Cosmic muon flux attenuation methods for superconducting qubit experiments, New J. Phys. 27, 023014 (2025).
  14. R. Acharya, D. A. Abanin, L. Aghababaie-Beni, I. Aleiner, T. I. Andersen, M. Ansmann, F. Arute, K. Arya, A. Asfaw, N. Astrakhantsev, et al., Quantum error correction below the surface code threshold, Nature (London) 638, 920 (2025).
  15. G. Moshel, O. Rabinowitz, E. Blumenthal, and S. Hacohen-Gourgy, Propagation velocity measurements of substrate phonon bursts using MKIDs for superconducting circuits, Appl. Phys. Lett. 125, 222601 (2024).
  16. P. K. Day, H. G. LeDuc, B. A. Mazin, A. Vayonakis, and J. Zmuidzinas, A broadband superconducting detector suitable for use in large arrays, Nature (London) 425, 817 (2003).
  17. L. Cardani, I. Colantoni, A. Cruciani, F. De Dominicis, G. D'Imperio, M. Laubenstein, A. Mariani, L. Pagnanini, S. Pirro, C. Tomei, et al., Disentangling the sources of ionizing radiation in superconducting qubits, Eur. Phys. J. C 83, 94 (2023).
  18. Z. Cheng, Y. R. Koh, H. Ahmad, R. Hu, J. Shi, M. E. Liao, Y. Wang, T. Bai, R. Li, E. Lee, et al., Thermal conductance across harmonic-matched epitaxial al-sapphire heterointerfaces, Commun. Phys. 3115 (2020).
  19. R. W. Ogburn, A search for particle dark matter using cryogenic germanium and silicon detectors in the one- and two-tower runs of CDMS-II at Soudan, Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 2008, https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/7860904.
  20. Scipy.optimize library, https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/.
  21. S. B. Kaplan, C. C. Chi, D. N. Langenberg, J. J. Chang, S. Jafarey, and D. J. Scalapino, Quasiparticle and phonon lifetimes in superconductors, Phys. Rev. B 14, 4854 (1976).
  22. L. Grünhaupt, N. Maleeva, S. T. Skacel, M. Calvo, F. Levy-Bertrand, A. V. Ustinov, H. Rotzinger, A. Monfardini, G. Catelani, and I. M. Pop, Loss mechanisms and quasiparticle dynamics in superconducting microwave resonators made of thin-film granular aluminum, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 117001 (2018).
  23. H. Rotzinger, S. T. Skacel, M. Pfirrmann, J. N. Voss, J. Münzberg, S. Probst, P. Bushev, M. P. Weides, A. V. Ustinov, and J. E. Mooij, Aluminium-oxide wires for superconducting high kinetic inductance circuits, Supercond. Sci. Technol. 30, 025002 (2017).
  24. P. Winkel, K. Borisov, L. Grünhaupt, D. Rieger, M. Spiecker, F. Valenti, A. V. Ustinov, W. Wernsdorfer, and I. M. Pop, Implementation of a transmon qubit using superconducting granular aluminum, Phys. Rev. X 10, 031032 (2020).
  25. F. Valenti, F. Henriques, G. Catelani, N. Maleeva, L. Grünhaupt, U. von Lüpke, S. T. Skacel, P. Winkel, A. Bilmes, A. V. Ustinov, et al., Interplay between kinetic inductance, nonlinearity, and quasiparticle dynamics in granular aluminum microwave kinetic inductance detectors, Phys. Rev. Appl. 11, 054087 (2019).
  26. R. Gartmann, N. Karcher, R. Weller, O. Krömer, and O. Sander, Progress of the ECHo SDR readout hardware for multiplexed MMCs, J. Low Temp. Phys. 209, 726 (2022).
  27. R. M. Barnett, C. D. Carone, D. E. Groom, T. G. Trippe, C. G. Wohl, B. Armstrong, P. S. Gee, G. S. Wagman, F. James, M. Mangano, et al., Review of particle physics, Phys. Rev. D 54, 1 (1996).
  28. R. Acharya, I. Aleiner, R. Allen, T. I. Andersen, M. Ansmann, F. Arute, K. Arya, A. Asfaw, J. Atalaya, R. Babbush, et al., Suppressing quantum errors by scaling a surface code logical qubit, Nature (London) 614, 676 (2023).
  29. F. Valenti, A. Murani, P. Paluch, R. Gartmann, L. Scheller, R. Weller, T. Reisinger, L. Ardila-Perez, and I. M. Pop, Data and code for: Seismometry of radiation-induced quasiparticle bursts in superconducting devices, Zenodo (2026), https://zenodo.org/records/19441411.
  30. Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC ZCU111 Evaluation Kit, https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/zcu111.html.
  31. R. Gebauer, N. Karcher, D. Gusenkova, M. Spiecker, L. Grünhaupt, I. Takmakov, P. Winkel, L. Planat, N. Roch, W. Wernsdorfer, et al., State preparation of a fluxonium qubit with feedback from a custom FPGA-based platform, in Fifth Interna- tional Conference on Quantum Technologies (ICQT-2019) (AIP Publishing, Melville, 2020).
  32. M. E. G. Redondo, T. Muscheid, R. Gartmann, J. M. Salum, L. P. Ferreyro, N. A. Müller, J. D. Bonilla-Neira, J. M. Geria, J. J. Bonaparte, A. Almela, et al., RFSoC Gen3-based software-defined radio characterization for the readout system of low-temperature bolometers, J. Low Temp. Phys. 215, 161 (2024).
  33. N. Karcher, R. Gebauer, R. Bauknecht, R. Illichmann, and O. Sander, Versatile configuration and control framework for real-time data acquisition systems, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 68, 1899 (2021).
  34. Qkit: a quantum measurement suite in Python, https://github.com/qkitgroup/qkit.
  35. S. Probst, F. B. Song, P. A. Bushev, A. V. Ustinov, and M. Weides, Efficient and robust analysis of complex scattering data under noise in microwave resonators, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 024706 (2015).
  36. N. Maleeva, L. Grünhaupt, T. Klein, F. Levy-Bertrand, O. Dupre, M. Calvo, F. Valenti, P. Winkel, F. Friedrich, W. Wernsdorfer, et al., Circuit quantum electrodynamics of granular aluminum resonators, Nat. Commun. 9, 3889 (2018).
  37. C. Eichler and A. Wallraff, Controlling the dynamic range of a Josephson parametric amplifier, EPJ Quantum Technol. 1, 2 (2014).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. B 113, 174504– Published 12 May, 2026
  • Received 21 August 2025
  • Revised 16 March 2026
  • Accepted 6 April 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

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.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation