Suppressing microwave crosstalk in superconducting quantum processors by designing parasitic drive capacitances

Abstract

As superconducting quantum processors scale to large qubit counts, unwanted microwave drive crosstalk becomes an important source of coherent errors. Here, we investigate the role of parasitic coupling paths in the suppression of drive crosstalk in a processor with two fixed-frequency transmon qubits and a tunable coupler. To account for the many different coupling paths, we develop a detailed circuit model to capture the dependence of crosstalk on the coupler frequency. We experimentally demonstrate suppression of crosstalk, finding that the suppression does not originate solely from cancellation of the effective qubit-qubit coupling, but also is a result of interference between other coupling paths. Building on these insights, we show that drive crosstalk can be suppressed with the right choice of parasitic capacitances, which otherwise often are treated as unwanted design imperfections. Our results provide practical guidance for low-crosstalk device design of superconducting quantum processors and point toward a broader strategy in which parasitic coupling paths are engineered rather than simply minimized.