Characterization of Time-Correlated Semiclassical Control Noise of IBM Transmon Qubits*

Precise and robust control of quantum systems is a requirement for many proposed quantum technologies spanning fields from quantum metrology to quantum computing. The major roadblock in precise and robust quantum control of quantum systems is the noise introduced by unwanted interactions between the quantum states and its environment. To design optimal control sequences which counter the noise, it is first necessary to have a high-accuracy characterization of the statistical properties of the noise. In this work, we apply provably optimal narrowband quantum control sequences to probe fine spectral features of both native and injected control noise on IBM’s transmon-based qubits using the OpenPulse framework. Our approach is founded on an adaptation of classical multitaper spectral analysis to the quantum realm [1].
[1] L.M. Norris, et al., Phys. Rev. A. 98, 032315 (2018).