Mixed spin-boson coupling for qubit readout with suppressed residual shot-noise dephasing

Abstract:Direct dipole coupling between a two-level system and a bosonic mode describes the interactions present in a wide range of physical platforms. In this work, we study a coupling that is mixed between two pairs of quadratures of a bosonic mode and a spin. In this setting, we can suppress the dispersive shift while retaining a nonzero Kerr shift, which results in a quadratic relationship between shot-noise dephasing and thermal photons in the oscillator. We demonstrate this configuration with a simple toy model, quantify the expected improvements to photon shot-noise dephasing of the spin, and describe an approach to fast qubit readout via the Kerr shift. Further, we show how such a regime is achievable in superconducting circuits because magnetic and electric couplings can be of comparable strength, using two examples: the Cooper pair transistor and the fluxonium molecule.

18 pages, 10 figures. Revised manuscript with a full master-equation analysis and additional discussion of nonlinear-term-induced dephasing and nonlinear readout. Corrected the scaling of the nonlinear dephasing rate and resolved several notational inconsistencies

arXiv:2503.13411 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2503.13411v2 [quant-ph] for this version)