Julian Kelly

Julian Kelly

Experimental Quantum Computing researcher with over a decade of experience working on design, fabrication, calibration, and benchmarking of superconducting quantum processors. Julian Kelly is the Director of Quantum Hardware at Google Quantum AI. He previously led the System Control Team which was responsible for building the hardware and software to operate and manipulate quantum computers. He began his career in quantum computing in 2008 where he joined John Martinis' physics research group at UCSB as an undergraduate and researched qubit control and benchmarking techniques. Julian stayed at UCSB and completed his PhD in 2015 in experimental quantum computing. His thesis focused on the development of highly controllable, coherent, and scalable "Xmon" transmon systems that demonstrated record fidelity entangling gate and measurement operations, culminating in a demonstration of experimental quantum error correction. Since joining Google, Julian worked to improve, scale, and integrate quantum processors and was the lead designer for the 72 qubit Bristlecone processor. Julian also developed the automated calibration framework "optimus" which is a software backbone of operating quantum processors at Google. The above technologies were critical in the team's "Quantum Supremacy" demonstration in 2019, and the first experimental demonstration of scalable quantum error correction in 2022. Google Scholar.
Authored Publications
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    Optimizing quantum gates towards the scale of logical qubits
    Andrew Dunsworth
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Desmond Chik
    Alejo Grajales Dau
    Yaxing Zhang
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Jimmy Chen
    Will Livingston
    Yu Chen
    Vlad Sivak
    Alexander Korotkov
    Trond Andersen
    Alexandre Bourassa
    Nature Communications, 15 (2024), pp. 2442
    Preview abstract A foundational assumption of quantum error correction theory is that quantum gates can be scaled to large processors without exceeding the error-threshold for fault tolerance. Two major challenges that could become fundamental roadblocks are manufacturing high-performance quantum hardware and engineering a control system that can reach its performance limits. The control challenge of scaling quantum gates from small to large processors without degrading performance often maps to non-convex, high-constraint, and time-dynamic control optimization over an exponentially expanding configuration space. Here we report on a control optimization strategy that can scalably overcome the complexity of such problems. We demonstrate it by choreographing the frequency trajectories of 68 frequency-tunable superconducting qubits to execute single- and two-qubit gates while mitigating computational errors. When combined with a comprehensive model of physical errors across our processor, the strategy suppresses physical error rates by ~3.7× compared with the case of no optimization. Furthermore, it is projected to achieve a similar performance advantage on a distance-23 surface code logical qubit with 1057 physical qubits. Our control optimization strategy solves a generic scaling challenge in a way that can be adapted to a variety of quantum operations, algorithms, and computing architectures. View details
    Dynamics of magnetization at infinite temperature in a Heisenberg spin chain
    Tomaž Prosen
    Vedika Khemani
    Rhine Samajdar
    Jesse Hoke
    Sarang Gopalakrishnan
    Andrew Dunsworth
    Bill Huggins
    Markus Hoffmann
    Alexis Morvan
    Josh Cogan
    Ben Curtin
    Guifre Vidal
    Bob Buckley
    Tom O'Brien
    John Mark Kreikebaum
    Rajeev Acharya
    Joonho Lee
    Ningfeng Zhu
    Shirin Montazeri
    Sergei Isakov
    Jamie Yao
    Clarke Smith
    Rebecca Potter
    Sean Harrington
    Jeremy Hilton
    Paula Heu
    Alexei Kitaev
    Alex Crook
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Kim Ming Lau
    Dmitry Abanin
    Trent Huang
    Aaron Shorter
    Steve Habegger
    Steven Martin
    Gina Bortoli
    Seun Omonije
    Richard Ross Allen
    Charles Rocque
    Vladimir Shvarts
    Alfredo Torres
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Michael Hamilton
    Dar Gilboa
    Lily Laws
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Kyle Anderson
    Ramis Movassagh
    David Rhodes
    Mike Shearn
    Wojtek Mruczkiewicz
    Desmond Chik
    Leonid Pryadko
    Xiao Mi
    Brooks Foxen
    Frank Arute
    Alejo Grajales Dau
    Yaxing Zhang
    Lara Faoro
    Alexander Lill
    Gordon Hill
    JiunHow Ng
    Justin Iveland
    Marco Szalay
    Orion Martin
    Juan Campero
    Juhwan Yoo
    Michael Newman
    William Giang
    Gonzalo Garcia
    Alex Opremcak
    Amanda Mieszala
    William Courtney
    Andrey Klots
    Wayne Liu
    Pavel Laptev
    Paul Conner
    Rolando Somma
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Grayson Young
    Tim Burger
    ILYA Drozdov
    Agustin Di Paolo
    Jimmy Chen
    Marika Kieferova
    Hung-Shen Chang
    Michael Broughton
    Negar Saei
    Juan Atalaya
    Markus Ansmann
    Pavol Juhas
    Murray Ich Nguyen
    Yuri Lensky
    Roberto Collins
    Élie Genois
    Jindra Skruzny
    Yu Chen
    Reza Fatemi
    Leon Brill
    Seneca Meeks
    Ashley Huff
    Doug Strain
    Monica Hansen
    Noah Shutty
    Ebrahim Forati
    Doug Thor
    Dave Landhuis
    Kenny Lee
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Henry Schurkus
    Cheng Xing
    Cody Jones
    Edward Farhi
    Vlad Sivak
    Raja Gosula
    Andre Petukhov
    Clint Earle
    Alexander Korotkov
    Ani Nersisyan
    Christopher Schuster
    George Sterling
    Trond Andersen
    Alexandre Bourassa
    Salvatore Mandra
    Kannan Sankaragomathi
    Vinicius Ferreira
    Science, 384 (2024), pp. 48-53
    Preview abstract Understanding universal aspects of quantum dynamics is an unresolved problem in statistical mechanics. In particular, the spin dynamics of the one-dimensional Heisenberg model were conjectured as to belong to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class based on the scaling of the infinite-temperature spin-spin correlation function. In a chain of 46 superconducting qubits, we studied the probability distribution of the magnetization transferred across the chain’s center, P(M). The first two moments of P(M) show superdiffusive behavior, a hallmark of KPZ universality. However, the third and fourth moments ruled out the KPZ conjecture and allow for evaluating other theories. Our results highlight the importance of studying higher moments in determining dynamic universality classes and provide insights into universal behavior in quantum systems. View details
    Stable quantum-correlated many-body states through engineered dissipation
    Sara Shabani
    Dripto Debroy
    Jerome Lloyd
    Alexios Michailidis
    Andrew Dunsworth
    Bill Huggins
    Markus Hoffmann
    Alexis Morvan
    Josh Cogan
    Ben Curtin
    Guifre Vidal
    Bob Buckley
    Tom O'Brien
    John Mark Kreikebaum
    Rajeev Acharya
    Joonho Lee
    Ningfeng Zhu
    Shirin Montazeri
    Sergei Isakov
    Jamie Yao
    Clarke Smith
    Rebecca Potter
    Sean Harrington
    Jeremy Hilton
    Paula Heu
    Alexei Kitaev
    Alex Crook
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Kim Ming Lau
    Dmitry Abanin
    Trent Huang
    Aaron Shorter
    Steve Habegger
    Gina Bortoli
    Charles Rocque
    Vladimir Shvarts
    Alfredo Torres
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Michael Hamilton
    Dar Gilboa
    Lily Laws
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Ramis Movassagh
    Mike Shearn
    Wojtek Mruczkiewicz
    Desmond Chik
    Leonid Pryadko
    Xiao Mi
    Brooks Foxen
    Frank Arute
    Alejo Grajales Dau
    Yaxing Zhang
    Lara Faoro
    Alexander Lill
    JiunHow Ng
    Justin Iveland
    Marco Szalay
    Orion Martin
    Juhwan Yoo
    Michael Newman
    William Giang
    Alex Opremcak
    Amanda Mieszala
    William Courtney
    Andrey Klots
    Wayne Liu
    Pavel Laptev
    Charina Chou
    Paul Conner
    Rolando Somma
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Grayson Young
    Tim Burger
    ILYA Drozdov
    Agustin Di Paolo
    Jimmy Chen
    Marika Kieferova
    Michael Broughton
    Negar Saei
    Juan Atalaya
    Markus Ansmann
    Pavol Juhas
    Murray Ich Nguyen
    Yuri Lensky
    Roberto Collins
    Élie Genois
    Jindra Skruzny
    Igor Aleiner
    Yu Chen
    Reza Fatemi
    Leon Brill
    Ashley Huff
    Doug Strain
    Monica Hansen
    Noah Shutty
    Ebrahim Forati
    Dave Landhuis
    Kenny Lee
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Henry Schurkus
    Cheng Xing
    Cody Jones
    Edward Farhi
    Raja Gosula
    Andre Petukhov
    Alexander Korotkov
    Ani Nersisyan
    Christopher Schuster
    George Sterling
    Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
    Trond Andersen
    Alexandre Bourassa
    Kannan Sankaragomathi
    Vinicius Ferreira
    Science, 383 (2024), pp. 1332-1337
    Preview abstract Engineered dissipative reservoirs have the potential to steer many-body quantum systems toward correlated steady states useful for quantum simulation of high-temperature superconductivity or quantum magnetism. Using up to 49 superconducting qubits, we prepared low-energy states of the transverse-field Ising model through coupling to dissipative auxiliary qubits. In one dimension, we observed long-range quantum correlations and a ground-state fidelity of 0.86 for 18 qubits at the critical point. In two dimensions, we found mutual information that extends beyond nearest neighbors. Lastly, by coupling the system to auxiliaries emulating reservoirs with different chemical potentials, we explored transport in the quantum Heisenberg model. Our results establish engineered dissipation as a scalable alternative to unitary evolution for preparing entangled many-body states on noisy quantum processors. View details
    Preview abstract Measurement is one of the essential components of quantum algorithms, and for superconducting qubits it is often the most error prone. Here, we demonstrate a model-based readout optimization achieving low measurement errors while avoiding detrimental side-effects. For simultaneous and mid-circuit measurements across 17 qubits we observe 1.5% error per qubit with a duration of 500 ns end-to-end and minimal excess reset error from residual resonator photons. We also suppress measurement-induced state transitions and achieve a qubit leakage rate limited by natural heating.This technique can scale to hundreds of qubits, and be used to enhance performance of error-correcting codes as well as near-term applications View details
    Preview abstract Practical quantum computing will require error rates that are well below what is achievable with physical qubits. Quantum error correction [1, 2] offers a path to algorithmically-relevant error rates by encoding logical qubits within many physical qubits, where increasing the number of physical qubits enhances protection against physical errors. However, introducing more qubits also increases the number of error sources, so the density of errors must be sufficiently low in order for logical performance to improve with increasing code size. Here, we report the measurement of logical qubit performance scaling across multiple code sizes, and demonstrate that our system of superconducting qubits has sufficient performance to overcome the additional errors from increasing qubit number. We find our distance-5 surface code logical qubit modestly outperforms an ensemble of distance-3 logical qubits on average, both in terms of logical error probability over 25 cycles and logical error per cycle (2.914%±0.016% compared to 3.028%±0.023%). To investigate damaging, low-probability error sources, we run a distance-25 repetition code and observe a 1.7 × 10−6 logical error per round floor set by a single high-energy event (1.6 × 10−7 when excluding this event). We are able to accurately model our experiment, and from this model we can extract error budgets that highlight the biggest challenges for future systems. These results mark the first experimental demonstration where quantum error correction begins to improve performance with increasing qubit number, and illuminate the path to reaching the logical error rates required for computation. View details
    Purification-Based Quantum Error Mitigation of Pair-Correlated Electron Simulations
    Christian Gogolin
    Vincent Elfving
    Fotios Gkritsis
    Oumarou Oumarou
    Gian-Luca R. Anselmetti
    Masoud Mohseni
    Andrew Dunsworth
    William J. Huggins
    Markus Rudolf Hoffmann
    Alexis Morvan
    Josh Godfrey Cogan
    Ben Curtin
    Guifre Vidal
    Bob Benjamin Buckley
    Trevor Johnathan Mccourt
    Thomas E O'Brien
    John Mark Kreikebaum
    Rajeev Acharya
    Joonho Lee
    Ningfeng Zhu
    Shirin Montazeri
    Sergei Isakov
    Jamie Yao
    Clarke Smith
    Rebecca Potter
    Sean Harrington
    Jeremy Patterson Hilton
    Alex Crook
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Kim Ming Lau
    Dmitry Abanin
    Trent Huang
    Aaron Shorter
    Steve Habegger
    Richard Ross Allen
    Vladimir Shvarts
    Alfredo Torres
    Stefano Polla
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Michael C. Hamilton
    Dar Gilboa
    Lily MeeKit Laws
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Kyle Anderson
    Ramis Movassagh
    Mike Shearn
    Wojtek Mruczkiewicz
    Desmond Chun Fung Chik
    Xiao Mi
    Brooks Riley Foxen
    Frank Carlton Arute
    Alejandro Grajales Dau
    Yaxing Zhang
    Lara Faoro
    Alexander T. Lill
    Jiun How Ng
    Justin Thomas Iveland
    Marco Szalay
    Orion Martin
    Juhwan Yoo
    Michael Newman
    William Giang
    Alex Opremcak
    William Courtney
    Andrey Klots
    Wayne Liu
    Pavel Laptev
    Paul Conner
    Rolando Diego Somma
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Grayson Robert Young
    Tim Burger
    Ilya Drozdov
    Jimmy Chen
    Marika Kieferova
    Michael Blythe Broughton
    Juan Atalaya
    Markus Ansmann
    Pavol Juhas
    Murray Nguyen
    Daniel Eppens
    Roberto Collins
    Jindra Skruzny
    Igor Aleiner
    Yu Chen
    Reza Fatemi
    Leon Brill
    Ashley Anne Huff
    Doug Strain
    Ebrahim Forati
    Dave Landhuis
    Kenny Lee
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Cody Jones
    Edward Farhi
    Andre Gregory Petukhov
    Alexander Korotkov
    Ani Nersisyan
    Christopher Schuster
    Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
    Trond Ikdahl Andersen
    Alexandre Bourassa
    Kannan Aryaperumal Sankaragomathi
    Nature Physics (2023)
    Preview abstract An important measure of the development of quantum computing platforms has been the simulation of increasingly complex physical systems. Prior to fault-tolerant quantum computing, robust error mitigation strategies are necessary to continue this growth. Here, we study physical simulation within the seniority-zero electron pairing subspace, which affords both a computational stepping stone to a fully correlated model, and an opportunity to validate recently introduced ``purification-based'' error-mitigation strategies. We compare the performance of error mitigation based on doubling quantum resources in time (echo verification) or in space (virtual distillation), on up to 20 qubits of a superconducting qubit quantum processor. We observe a reduction of error by one to two orders of magnitude below less sophisticated techniques (e.g. post-selection); the gain from error mitigation is seen to increase with the system size. Employing these error mitigation strategies enables the implementation of the largest variational algorithm for a correlated chemistry system to-date. Extrapolating performance from these results allows us to estimate minimum requirements for a beyond-classical simulation of electronic structure. We find that, despite the impressive gains from purification-based error mitigation, significant hardware improvements will be required for classically intractable variational chemistry simulations. View details
    Measurement-induced entanglement and teleportation on a noisy quantum processor
    Vedika Khemani
    Matteo Ippoliti
    Andrew Dunsworth
    Bill Huggins
    Markus Hoffmann
    Alexis Morvan
    Josh Cogan
    Ben Curtin
    Guifre Vidal
    Bob Buckley
    Tom O'Brien
    John Mark Kreikebaum
    Rajeev Acharya
    Joonho Lee
    Ningfeng Zhu
    Shirin Montazeri
    Sergei Isakov
    Jamie Yao
    Clarke Smith
    Rebecca Potter
    Jeremy Hilton
    Paula Heu
    Alexei Kitaev
    Alex Crook
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Kim Ming Lau
    Dmitry Abanin
    Trent Huang
    Aaron Shorter
    Steve Habegger
    Gina Bortoli
    Seun Omonije
    Charles Rocque
    Vladimir Shvarts
    Alfredo Torres
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Michael Hamilton
    Dar Gilboa
    Lily Laws
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Ramis Movassagh
    Mike Shearn
    Wojtek Mruczkiewicz
    Desmond Chik
    Leonid Pryadko
    Xiao Mi
    Brooks Foxen
    Frank Arute
    Alejo Grajales Dau
    Yaxing Zhang
    Alexander Lill
    JiunHow Ng
    Justin Iveland
    Marco Szalay
    Orion Martin
    Juhwan Yoo
    Michael Newman
    William Giang
    Alex Opremcak
    Amanda Mieszala
    William Courtney
    Andrey Klots
    Wayne Liu
    Pavel Laptev
    Paul Conner
    Rolando Somma
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Jesse Hoke
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Grayson Young
    Tim Burger
    ILYA Drozdov
    Agustin Di Paolo
    Jimmy Chen
    Marika Kieferova
    Michael Broughton
    Negar Saei
    Juan Atalaya
    Markus Ansmann
    Pavol Juhas
    Murray Ich Nguyen
    Yuri Lensky
    Daniel Eppens
    Roberto Collins
    Jindra Skruzny
    Yu Chen
    Reza Fatemi
    Leon Brill
    Ashley Huff
    Doug Strain
    Monica Hansen
    Noah Shutty
    Ebrahim Forati
    Dave Landhuis
    Kenny Lee
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Henry Schurkus
    Cheng Xing
    Cody Jones
    Edward Farhi
    Raja Gosula
    Andre Petukhov
    Alexander Korotkov
    Ani Nersisyan
    Christopher Schuster
    George Sterling
    Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
    Trond Andersen
    Alexandre Bourassa
    Kannan Sankaragomathi
    Vinicius Ferreira
    Nature, 622 (2023), 481–486
    Preview abstract Measurement has a special role in quantum theory: by collapsing the wavefunction, it can enable phenomena such as teleportation and thereby alter the ‘arrow of time’ that constrains unitary evolution. When integrated in many-body dynamics, measurements can lead to emergent patterns of quantum information in space–time that go beyond the established paradigms for characterizing phases, either in or out of equilibrium. For present-day noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) processors, the experimental realization of such physics can be problematic because of hardware limitations and the stochastic nature of quantum measurement. Here we address these experimental challenges and study measurement-induced quantum information phases on up to 70 superconducting qubits. By leveraging the interchangeability of space and time, we use a duality mapping to avoid mid-circuit measurement and access different manifestations of the underlying phases, from entanglement scaling to measurement-induced teleportation. We obtain finite-sized signatures of a phase transition with a decoding protocol that correlates the experimental measurement with classical simulation data. The phases display remarkably different sensitivity to noise, and we use this disparity to turn an inherent hardware limitation into a useful diagnostic. Our work demonstrates an approach to realizing measurement-induced physics at scales that are at the limits of current NISQ processors. View details
    Readout of a quantum processor with high dynamic range Josephson parametric amplifiers
    Andrew Dunsworth
    Markus Rudolf Hoffmann
    Alexis Morvan
    Josh Godfrey Cogan
    Ben Curtin
    Bob Benjamin Buckley
    Trevor Johnathan Mccourt
    John Mark Kreikebaum
    Rajeev Acharya
    Ningfeng Zhu
    Shirin Montazeri
    Jamie Yao
    Rebecca Potter
    Sean Harrington
    Jeremy Patterson Hilton
    Alex Crook
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Trent Huang
    Aaron Shorter
    Vladimir Shvarts
    Alfredo Torres
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Michael C. Hamilton
    Lily MeeKit Laws
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Mike Shearn
    Xiao Mi
    Brooks Riley Foxen
    Frank Carlton Arute
    Alejandro Grajales Dau
    Alexander Lill
    JiunHow Ng
    Justin Thomas Iveland
    Marco Szalay
    Juhwan Yoo
    William Giang
    Alex Opremcak
    Wayne Liu
    Pavel Laptev
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Grayson Robert Young
    Tim Burger
    Jimmy Chen
    Marika Kieferova
    Markus Ansmann
    Murray Nguyen
    Roberto Collins
    Yu Chen
    Reza Fatemi
    Leon Brill
    Ashley Anne Huff
    Ebrahim Forati
    Dave Landhuis
    Kenny Lee
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Alexander Korotkov
    Ani Nersisyan
    Christopher Schuster
    Alexandre Bourassa
    Kannan Aryaperumal Sankaragomathi
    Applied Physics Letters, 122 (2023), pp. 014001
    Preview abstract We demonstrate a high dynamic range Josephson parametric amplifier (JPA) in which the active nonlinear element is implemented using an array of rf-SQUIDs. The device is matched to the 50 $\Omega$ environment with a Klopfenstein-taper impedance transformer and achieves a bandwidth of 250-300 MHz, with input saturation powers up to $-95$~dBm at 20 dB gain. A 54-qubit Sycamore processor was used to benchmark these devices, providing a calibration for readout power, an estimate of amplifier added noise, and a platform for comparison against standard impedance matched parametric amplifiers with a single dc-SQUID. We find that the high power rf-SQUID array design has no adverse effect on system noise, readout fidelity, and qubit dephasing, and we estimate an upper bound on amplifier added noise at 1.6 times the quantum limit. Lastly, amplifiers with this design show no degradation in readout fidelity due to gain compression, which can occur in multi-tone multiplexed readout with traditional JPAs. View details
    Direct Measurement of Nonlocal Interactions in the Many-Body Localized Phase
    Brooks Foxen
    Ben Chiaro
    Andrew Dunsworth
    Rami Barends
    Amit Vainsencher
    John Martinis
    Josh Mutus
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Trent Huang
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Frank Carlton Arute
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Jimmy Chen
    Roberto Collins
    Yu Chen
    Dave Landhuis
    Kunal Arya
    Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
    Physical Review Research, 4 (2022), pp. 013148
    Preview abstract The interplay of interactions and strong disorder can lead to an exotic quantum many-body localized (MBL) phase of matter. Beyond the absence of transport, the MBL phase has distinctive signatures, such as slow dephasing and logarithmic entanglement growth; they commonly result in slow and subtle modifications of the dynamics, rendering their measurement challenging. Here, we experimentally characterize these properties of the MBL phase in a system of coupled superconducting qubits. By implementing phase sensitive techniques, we map out the structure of local integrals of motion in the MBL phase. Tomographic reconstruction of single and two-qubit density matrices allows us to determine the spatial and temporal entanglement growth between the localized sites. In addition, we study the preservation of entanglement in the MBL phase. The interferometric protocols implemented here detect affirmative quantum correlations and exclude artifacts due to the imperfect isolation of the system. By measuring elusive MBL quantities, our work highlights the advantages of phase sensitive measurements in studying novel phases of matter. View details
    Noise-resilient Majorana Edge Modes on a Chain of Superconducting Qubits
    Zijun Chen
    Brooks Foxen
    Masoud Mohseni
    Emily Mount
    Joao Basso
    Andrew Dunsworth
    William J. Huggins
    Yuan Su
    Markus Rudolf Hoffmann
    Alexis Morvan
    Guifre Vidal
    Bob Benjamin Buckley
    Thomas E O'Brien
    John Mark Kreikebaum
    Rajeev Acharya
    Joonho Lee
    Shirin Montazeri
    Sergei Isakov
    Jamie Yao
    Rebecca Potter
    Jeremy Patterson Hilton
    Alexei Kitaev
    Alex Crook
    Fedor Kostritsa
    Kim Ming Lau
    Dmitry Abanin
    Trent Huang
    Steve Habegger
    Alexa Rubinov
    Vladimir Shvarts
    Anthony Megrant
    Charles Neill
    Dar Gilboa
    Nicholas Bushnell
    Mike Shearn
    Wojtek Mruczkiewicz
    Xiao Mi
    Frank Carlton Arute
    Alejandro Grajales Dau
    Yaxing Zhang
    Lara Faoro
    Justin Thomas Iveland
    Marco Szalay
    Orion Martin
    Juhwan Yoo
    Michael Newman
    William Giang
    Alex Opremcak
    William Courtney
    Andrey Klots
    Wayne Liu
    Pavel Laptev
    Paul Conner
    Vadim Smelyanskiy
    Benjamin Chiaro
    Bernardo Meurer Costa
    Michael Blythe Broughton
    Juan Atalaya
    Daniel Eppens
    Roberto Collins
    Igor Aleiner
    Yu Chen
    Reza Fatemi
    Leon Brill
    Ashley Anne Huff
    Doug Strain
    Ebrahim Forati
    Dave Landhuis
    Kenny Lee
    Ping Yeh
    Kunal Arya
    Michel Henri Devoret
    Cody Jones
    Edward Farhi
    Andre Gregory Petukhov
    Alexander Korotkov
    Christopher Schuster
    Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
    Trond Ikdahl Andersen
    Alexandre Bourassa
    Kannan Aryaperumal Sankaragomathi
    Science (2022) (to appear)
    Preview abstract Inherent symmetry of a quantum system may protect its otherwise fragile states. Leveraging such protection requires testing its robustness against uncontrolled environmental interactions. Using 47 superconducting qubits, we implement the kicked Ising model which exhibits Majorana edge modes (MEMs) protected by a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetry. Remarkably, we find that any multi-qubit Pauli operator overlapping with the MEMs exhibits a uniform decay rate comparable to single-qubit relaxation rates, irrespective of its size or composition. This finding allows us to accurately reconstruct the exponentially localized spatial profiles of the MEMs. Spectroscopic measurements further indicate exponentially suppressed hybridization between the MEMs over larger system sizes, which manifests as a strong resilience against low-frequency noise. Our work elucidates the noise sensitivity of symmetry-protected edge modes in a solid-state environment. View details