Improving the Time Stability of Superconducting Planar Resonators

Quantum computers are close to become a practical technology. Solid-state implementations based, for example, on superconducting devices strongly rely on the quality of the constituent materials. In this work, we fabricate and characterize superconducting planar resonators in the microwave range, made from aluminum films on silicon substrates. We study two samples, one of which is unprocessed and the other cleaned with a hydrofluoric acid bath and by heating at 880 °C in high vacuum. We verify the efficacy of the cleaning treatment by means of scanning transmission electron microscope imaging of samples’ cross sections. From 3 h-long resonator measurements at ≈ 10 mK and with ≈ 10 photonic excitations, we estimate the frequency flicker noise level using the Allan deviation and find an approximately tenfold noise reduction between the two samples; the cleaned sample shows a flicker noise power coefficient for the fractional frequency of ≈ 0.23 × 10 -15 . Our preliminary results follow the generalized tunneling model for two-level state defects in amorphous dielectric materials and show that suitable cleaning treatments can help the operation of superconducting quantum computers.