Leo Sementilli

1. Interface Piezoelectric Loss in Superconducting Qubits

   H. Zhou*, K. Yu*, Y. Balaji, S. Shirol, L. Sementilli, Z.-H. Zhang, A. Schwartzberg, A. Sipahigil

   arXiv:2605.15554 (2026)

   arXiv BibTeX Abstract

   @unpublished{zhou_interface_2026,
     title = {Interface {Piezoelectric} {Loss} in {Superconducting} {Qubits}},
     url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2605.15554},
     doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2605.15554},
     author = {Zhou, Haoxin and Yu, Kangdi and Balaji, Yashwanth and Shirol, Sanjit and Sementilli, Leo and Zhang, Zi-Huai and Schwartzberg, Adam and Sipahigil, Alp},
     month = may,
     year = {2026},
     note = {arXiv:2605.15554 [quant-ph]},
     arxiv = {2605.15554}
   }
   

   Dissipation remains a central obstacle to improving superconducting quantum circuits, yet the microscopic origins of loss in widely used materials platforms are not fully understood. Here, we report the observation of interface piezoelectricity-induced dissipation in superconducting qubits fabricated on high-resistivity silicon. Our devices use a transmon qubit with a shunt capacitor that simultaneously serves as an interdigital transducer embedded in a surface acoustic wave resonator. By tuning the qubit transition into resonance with discrete mechanical modes, we observe up to a factor-of-two reduction in qubit lifetime, consistent with energy exchange between the qubit and mechanical modes mediated by piezoelectric coupling at the aluminum-silicon interface. Our findings provide direct evidence for interface piezoelectricity as a distinct loss channel in superconducting qubits. Combined with multiphysics simulations, these findings suggest that interface piezoelectric loss can dominate over loss from two-level systems at sufficiently high frequencies.

* Equal contribution