Survey of dynamical decoupling sequences on superconducting qubit devices

Dynamical decoupling (DD) is the judicious placement of control pulses to decouple a quantum system from its environment without the need for feedback. In this work, we survey a fairly comprehensive set of DD sequences across 3 superconducting qubit IBM devices. (1) We start by showing that DD can preserve a quantum state much longer than freely evolving it. (2) Next, we demonstrate that advanced DD sequences can greatly outperform well-known sequences like CPMG and XY4 when given a small set of additional pulse-level controls available with OpenPulse but not with standard circuit programming. (3) We then show how DD can be used to perform noise spectroscopy. (4) Finally, we connect our theoretical expectations of sequence behavior to actual performance in the context of the device physics such as the use of finite width pulses and noise. Though our work focuses on superconducting devices, our methodology and many of our conclusions are broadly applicable to any NISQ device.