Mitigating state transition errors during readout with a synchronized flux pulse

Abstract: State transitions during qubit measurements are extremely detrimental to quantum tasks that rely on repeated measurements, such as quantum error correction. These state transitions can occur when excessive measurement power leads to qubit excitations outside its computational space. Alternatively, the qubit state can decay rapidly when the measurement protocol inadvertently couples the qubit to lossy modes such as two-level systems (TLSs). We experimentally verify the impact of these TLSs in qubit readout by measuring the transition errors at different qubit flux bias. Because such state transitions during measurements are often localized in frequency space, we demonstrate the ability to avoid them during a fluxonium readout by exploiting the qubit's flux-tunability. By synchronizing the flux bias with the readout photon dynamics, we obtain an optimal readout fidelity of 99 % (98.4 %) in 1 us (0.5 us) integration time. Our work advances the understanding of state transitions in superconducting circuit measurements and demonstrates the potential of fluxonium qubits to achieve fast high-fidelity readout.