TY - JOUR AU - Riwar, Roman AU - Glazman, L. I. AU - Catelani, G. TI - Dissipation by normal-metal traps in transmon qubits JO - Physical review / B VL - 98 IS - 2 SN - 2469-9950 CY - Woodbury, NY PB - Inst. M1 - FZJ-2018-04108 SP - 024502 PY - 2018 AB - Quasiparticles are an intrinsic source of relaxation and decoherence for superconducting qubits. Recent works have shown that normal-metal traps may be used to evacuate quasiparticles, and potentially improve the qubit lifetime. Here, we investigate how far the normal metals themselves may introduce qubit relaxation. We identify the Ohmic losses inside the normal metal and the tunneling current through the normal-metal–superconductor interface as the relevant relaxation mechanisms. We show that the Ohmic loss contribution depends strongly on the device and trap geometry, as a result of the inhomogeneous electric fields in the qubit. The correction of the quality factor due to the tunneling current on the other hand is highly sensitive to the nonequilibrium distribution function of the quasiparticles. Overall, we show that even when choosing less than optimal parameters, the presence of normal-metal traps does not affect the quality factor of state-of-the-art qubits. LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 UR - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000437668600006 DO - DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.98.024502 UR - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/850022 ER -