All-optical control and multiplexed readout of multiple superconducting qubits

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2512.21199v1
• Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2025 14:27:21 GMT
• Title: All-optical control and multiplexed readout of multiple superconducting qubits
• Authors: Xiaoxuan Pan, Chuanlong Ma, Jia-Qi Wang, Zheng-Xu Zhu, Linze Li, Jiajun Chen, Yuan-Hao Yang, Yilong Zhou, Jia-Hua Zou, Xin-Biao Xu, Weiting Wang, Baile Chen, Haifeng Yu, Chang-Ling Zou, Luyan Sun,
• Abstract summary: Superconducting quantum circuits operate at millikelvin temperatures, typically requiring independent microwave cables for each qubit for connecting room-temperature control and readout electronics.<n>Here we demonstrate a complete optical I/O architecture for superconducting quantum circuits, in which all control and readout signals are transmitted exclusively via optical photons.<n>This closed-loop optical I/O introduces no measurable degradation to qubit coherence times, with an optically driven single-qubit gate fidelity showing only a 0.19% reduction relative to standard microwave operation.
• Score: 13.306580367513329
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Superconducting quantum circuits operate at millikelvin temperatures, typically requiring independent microwave cables for each qubit for connecting room-temperature control and readout electronics. However, scaling to large-scale processors hosting hundreds of qubits faces a severe input/output (I/O) bottleneck, as the dense cable arrays impose prohibitive constraints on physical footprint, thermal load, wiring complexity, and cost. Here we demonstrate a complete optical I/O architecture for superconducting quantum circuits, in which all control and readout signals are transmitted exclusively via optical photons. Employing a broadband traveling-wave Brillouin microwave-to-optical transducer, we achieve simultaneous frequency-multiplexed optical readout of two qubits. Combined with fiber-integrated photodiode arrays for control signal delivery, this closed-loop optical I/O introduces no measurable degradation to qubit coherence times, with an optically driven single-qubit gate fidelity showing only a 0.19% reduction relative to standard microwave operation. These results establish optical interconnects as a viable path toward large-scale superconducting quantum processors, and open the possibility of networking multiple superconducting quantum computers housed in separate dilution refrigerators through a centralized room-temperature control infrastructure.

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