Power Delivery for Cryogenic Scalable Quantum Applications: Challenges and Opportunities

TL;DR

This paper tackles the challenge of delivering power to cryogenic control electronics as quantum systems scale to millions of qubits. It analyzes four architectures—HV wired, radiative wireless, non-radiative wireless, and a HV/non-radiative hybrid—evaluating them against thermal load, power loss, heating, noise, power density, scalability, reliability, and complexity. The findings indicate that while HV wired transfer reduces wire losses, it still incurs coupling noise and interstage heating, whereas wireless approaches abolish thermal-load constraints and dramatically reduce high-frequency noise, with non-radiative methods offering further advantages at the expense of alignment complexity; a HV/non-radiative hybrid emerges as a particularly promising path. The work provides a framework for selecting power-delivery strategies in scalable quantum hardware, with implications for wiring reduction, cooling efficiency, and overall system reliability in cryogenic environments.

Abstract

Quantum technologies offer unprecedented capabilities in computation and secure information transfer. Their implementation requires qubits to operate at cryogenic temperatures (CT) while control and readout electronics typically still remains at room temperature (RT). As systems scale to millions of qubits, the electronics should also operate at CT to avoid a wiring bottleneck. However, wired power transfer from RT for such electronics introduces severe challenges, including thermal load between cooling stages, Joule heating, noise coupling, and wiring scalability. This paper addresses those challenges by evaluating several candidate architectures for scalable power transfer in the dilution frige: high-voltage (HV) wired power transfer, radiative wireless transfer, non-radiative wireless transfer, and a hybrid HV and non-radiative transfer. These architectures are analyzed in terms of thermal load, power loss, heating, coupling noise, power density, scalability, reliability, and complexity. Comparative analysis demonstrates the trade-offs among these architectures, while highlighting HV non-radiative transfer as a promising candidate for scalable quantum systems.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Existing wired power transfer in dilution fridge: (a) diagram of wired power transfer (b) prototype of dilution fridge zu2022dilution.
• Figure 2: Different power transfer architectures in and around a dilution refrigerator.
• Figure 3: Power management blocks.
• Figure 4: Power comparison of different architectures: (a) power loss (b) the number of qubits that can be powered.