Qubit-State Purity Oscillations from Anisotropic Transverse Noise

Abstract

We explore the dynamics of qubit-state purity in the presence of transverse noise that is anisotropically distributed in the Bloch-sphere XY plane. We perform Ramsey experiments with noise injected along a fixed laboratory-frame axis and observe oscillations in the purity at twice the qubit frequency arising from the intrinsic qubit Larmor precession. We probe the oscillation dependence on the noise anisotropy, orientation, and power spectral density, using a low-frequency fluxonium qubit. Our results elucidate the impact of transverse noise anisotropy on qubit decoherence and may be useful to disentangle charge and flux noise in superconducting quantum circuits.