Performance of the Ultra-High Rate Germanium (UHRGe) System

Performance of the Ultra-High Rate Germanium (UHRGe) System client repor

Impact of ionizing radiation on superconducting qubit coherence

The practical viability of any qubit technology stands on long coherence times and high-fidelity operations, with the superconducting qubit modality being a leading example. However, superconducting qubit coherence is impacted by broken Cooper pairs, referred to as quasiparticles, with a density that is empirically observed to be orders of magnitude greater than the value predicted for thermal equilibrium by the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory of superconductivity. Previous work has shown that infrared photons significantly increase the quasiparticle density, yet even in the best isolated systems, it still remains higher than expected, suggesting that another generation mechanism exists. In this Letter, we provide evidence that ionizing radiation from environmental radioactive materials and cosmic rays contributes to this observed difference, leading to an elevated quasiparticle density that would ultimately limit superconducting qubits of the type measured here to coherence times in the millisecond regime. We further demonstrate that introducing radiation shielding reduces the flux of ionizing radiation and positively correlates with increased coherence time. Albeit a small effect for today's qubits, reducing or otherwise mitigating the impact of ionizing radiation will be critical for realizing fault-tolerant superconducting quantum computers.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figure

Analog Readout and Analysis Software for the Ultra-High Rate Germanium (UHRGe) Project

High-resolution high-purity germanium (HPGe) spectrometers are needed for Safeguards applications such as spent fuel assay and uranium hexafluoride cylinder verification. In addition, these spectrometers would be applicable to other high-rate applications such as non-destructive assay of nuclear materials using nuclear resonance fluorescence. Count-rate limitations of today's HPGe technologies, however, lead to concessions in their use and reduction in their efficacy. Large-volume, very high-rate HPGe spectrometers are needed to enable a new generation of nondestructive assay systems. The Ultra-High Rate Germanium (UHRGe) project is developing HPGe spectrometer systems capable of operating at unprecedented rates, 10 to 100 times those available today. This report documents current status of developments in the analog electronics and analysis software

Determining the neutrino mass with cyclotron radiation emission spectroscopy—Project 8

The most sensitive direct method to establish the absolute neutrino mass is observation of the endpoint of the tritium beta-decay spectrum. Cyclotron radiation emission spectroscopy (CRES) is a precision spectrographic technique that can probe much of the unexplored neutrino mass range with O(eV) resolution. A lower bound of m(νe) ≳ 9(0.1) meV is set by observations of neutrino oscillations, while the KATRIN experiment-the current-generation tritium beta-decay experiment that is based on magnetic adiabatic collimation with an electrostatic (MAC-E) filter-will achieve a sensitivity of m(νe) ≲ 0.2 eV. The CRES technique aims to avoid the difficulties in scaling up a MAC-E filter-based experiment to achieve a lower mass sensitivity. In this paper we review the current status of the CRES technique and describe Project 8, a phased absolute neutrino mass experiment that has the potential to reach sensitivities down to m(νe) ≲ 40 meV using an atomic tritium source.United States. Department of Energy (Grant DE-SC0011091