Effect of Eccosorb IR Filters on Qubit Coherence

Superconducting qubits may suffer, despite extensive shielding, from interactions with residual noise photons arriving through signal lines to the device, which leads to qubit decoherence. To mitigate the photon population at the qubit frequency due to thermal radiation, attenuators can thermalize the electromagnetic environment at the sample stage. However, to prevent quasiparticle poisoning caused by Cooper pair breaking due to IR radiation, additional filtering is required. Such IR filters are routinely achieved using Eccosorb, a commercially available castable dielectric. We manufacture Eccosorb filters of various length and grade and characterize them at room and liquid nitrogen temperatures up to 67 GHz. Based on the obtained frequency dependent attenuation, we compute the residual noise photon population at base temperature and conclude on the preferred filter and attenuator configuration for superconducting qubit experiments. We validate the suggested microwave filtering for drive and flux bias lines by comparing coherent properties of transmon qubits for different filter configurations.