Nanowire Superinductance Fluxonium Qubit*

We characterize a fluxonium qubit consisting of a Josephson junction inductively shunted with a NbTiN nanowire superinductance. We explain the measured energy spectrum by means of a multimode theory accounting for the distributed nature of the superinductance and the effect of the circuit nonlinearity to all orders in the Josephson potential. Using multiphoton Raman spectroscopy, we address multiple fluxonium transitions, observe multilevel Autler-Townes splitting and measure an excited state lifetime of T₁ = 20 μs. By measuring T₁ at different magnetic flux values, we find a crossover in the lifetime limiting mechanism from capacitive to inductive losses.