Time-frequency-correlated Native CCZ Gate in Superconducting Circuits

Abstract

Practical quantum advantage hinges on executing deep quantum circuits within the coherence limits of noisy intermediate-scale quantum processors. The absence of native, high-fidelity multi-qubit gates remains a major bottleneck, as their decomposition into single- and two-qubit gates leads to prohibitive depth and error overhead. Here, we propose a hardware-efficient protocol that directly implements a native controlled-controlled-Z (CCZ) gate in a tunable-coupler superconducting circuit. Our theoretical protocol activates a resonant three-qubit interaction via a time-frequency correlated virtual process, explicitly relying on the dynamic resonant exchange within the $|101\rangle \leftrightarrow |020\rangle$ transition manifold. This approach is compatible with standard tunable-coupler architectures without requiring additional control resources. Through a systematic calibration workflow combining pulse shaping and active cancellation of residual phases, we demonstrate a gate fidelity exceeding 99\% within $165\,\mathrm{ns}$ -- significantly outperforming decomposed sequences. Comprehensive error budgeting confirms that the gate performance remains robust against realistic experimental imperfections. Furthermore, we show that this scheme can be naturally extended to a continuous $\mathrm{CCPhase}(\theta)$ gate set. This work provides a direct, high-fidelity route to three-qubit entanglement, offering promising prospects for efficient execution of quantum algorithms on near-term superconducting hardware.