Abstract: The world of superconducting qubits has been dominated by the transmon for a while. Over the course of more than a decade, much effort has been devoted to enhancing this circuit’s coherence times. Despite the remarkable success, we should ask: is the transmon the best we can do, and will it ultimately suffice for implementing quantum error correction and leaving the NISQ era behind? In this talk, I will discuss interesting circuit alternatives with enhanced intrinsic protection from noise that may well play a decisive role in the future. I will give a tour of some of our recent work on noise-protected qubits and illustrate how our open-source “scqubits” package is making it straightforward to explore the world of superconducting qubits.

Watch Dr. Jens Koch’s talk here: https://youtu.be/O-g36zqnWes