Structural control of two-level defect density revealed by high-throughput correlative measurements of Josephson junctions
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2602.11469 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 12 Feb 2026] Title:Structural control of two-level defect density revealed by high-throughput correlative measurements of Josephson junctions Authors:Oliver F. Wolff, Harshvardhan Mantry, Rahim Raja, Wei-Hsiang Peng, Kaushik Singirikonda, Seungkyun Lee, Shishir Sudhaman, Rafael Goncalves, Pinshane Y. Huang, Angela Kou, Wolfgang Pfaff View a PDF of the paper titled Structural control of two-level defect density revealed by high-throughput correlative measurements of Josephson junctions, by Oliver F. Wolff and 10 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Materials defects in Josephson junctions (JJs), often referred to as two-level systems (TLS), couple to superconducting qubits and are a critical bottleneck for scalable quantum processors. Despite their importance, understanding the microscopic sources of TLS and how to mitigate them has remained a major challenge. Here, we demonstrate a high-throughput, correlated approach to trace the microstructural origins of strongly-coupled TLS in Josephson circuits. We assembled a massive dataset of TLS across 6,000 Al/AlOx/Al JJs and more than 600 atomic resolution transmission electron microscopy images. We statistically link fabrication, microstructure, and TLS occurrence, revealing a strong correlation between Al electrode thickness, Al grain size, and TLS density. Correspondingly, we find a two-thirds reduction in TLS prompted by a change in electrode fabrication parameters. These results demonstrate a robust, data-driven methodology to understand and control defects in quantum circuits and pave the way for significantly reducing TLS density. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall); Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) Cite as: arXiv:2602.11469 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2602.11469v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.11469 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Wolfgang Pfaff [view email] [v1] Thu, 12 Feb 2026 01:01:10 UTC (5,642 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Structural control of two-level defect density revealed by high-throughput correlative measurements of Josephson junctions, by Oliver F. Wolff and 10 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-02 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.mes-hall cond-mat.mtrl-sci References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)