Procedure for improving cross-resonance noise resistance using pulse-level control

Abstract: Current implementations of superconducting qubits are often limited by the low fidelities of multi-qubit gates. We present a reproducible and runtime-efficient pulse-level approach for calibrating an improved cross-resonance gate CR($\theta$) for arbitrary $\theta$. This CR($\theta$) gate can be used to produce a wide range of other two-qubit gates via the application of standard single-qubit gates. By performing an interleaved randomised benchmarking experiment, we demonstrate that our approach leads to a significantly higher noise resistance than the circuit-level approach currently used by IBM. Hence, our procedure provides a genuine improvement for applications where noise remains a limiting factor.