Phonon traps reduce the quasiparticle density in superconducting circuits

Out of equilibrium quasiparticles (QPs) are a main source of decoherence in high impedance superconducting quantum circuits. Despite significant progress in the understanding of QP dynamics, pinpointing their origin and decreasing their density remain outstanding tasks. The cyclic process of recombination and generation of QPs implies the exchange of phonons between the superconducting film and the underlying substrate. Reducing the number of substrate phonons with frequencies above the spectral gap of the superconductor should result in a reduction of QPs [1]. Indeed, we demonstrate that surrounding high impedance resonators made of granular aluminum (grAl) with lower gapped thin film aluminum islands increases the internal quality factors of the resonators in the single photon regime, suppresses the noise, and reduces the rate of observed QP bursts [2]. The aluminum islands are positioned far enough from the resonators to be electromagnetically decoupled, thus not changing the resonator frequency, nor the loading. We therefore attribute the improvements observed in grAl resonators to phonon trapping at frequencies close to the spectral gap of aluminum, well below the grAl gap.

[1] Valenti et al., Phys. Rev. App 11, 054087 (2019)
[2] Henriques, Valenti et al., arXiv:1908.04257