A from-scratch, beginner-friendly tutorial on superconducting qubits, plus the papers I'd hand a newcomer.
I'm a PhD student working on superconducting qubits, and this repo is my attempt to write the introduction I wish I'd had when I started. It's a tutorial built from scratch, no assumed background beyond undergraduate physics and a little linear algebra, meant for anyone who wants to pick up the field and actually understand why the hardware looks the way it does.
I wrote every explanation in my own words, teaching standard, publicly known physics. Where it helps, I point you to the canonical reviews and textbooks so you can go deeper. My goal is simple: take you from "what is a qubit?" all the way to a first look at quantum error correction, one chapter at a time.
If you find it useful, a ⭐ genuinely makes my day, and corrections are always welcome.
Start with the index, then work through the chapters in order. Each one builds on the last.
If you read nothing else, read these two. They're the reviews I recommend to every newcomer, and they pair naturally with the chapters above:
- A Quantum Engineer's Guide to Superconducting Qubits, Krantz et al., 2019 → arXiv:1904.06560
- Superconducting Qubits: Current State of Play, Kjaergaard et al., 2020 → arXiv:1905.13641
For the full annotated reading list, organized roughly to follow the tutorial, see reading-list/README.md.
📎 Papers are linked, not re-hosted, so copyright stays with the original authors and publishers. Please access them through arXiv or the publisher.
- Students or researchers moving into superconducting quantum hardware from another field.
- Software/quantum-information people who want to understand the device underneath the abstractions.
- Anyone curious who has undergraduate physics and wants a guided, self-contained on-ramp.
You do not need prior quantum-hardware experience. Comfort with basic quantum mechanics, linear algebra, and electrical circuits is enough.
- Read in order. Each chapter assumes the previous ones.
- Keep the two reviews open alongside the tutorial, the chapters are meant to make those papers easier to read, not to replace them.
- Follow the references at the end of each chapter when you want depth.
- Treat all numbers as illustrative. Any figures I quote are generic, order-of-magnitude values to build intuition, real devices vary widely, so always check current literature for specifics.
This is a living document and I'd love help making it clearer and more correct.
- Spotted an error, an unclear explanation, or a broken link? Open an issue.
- Want to improve a chapter or suggest a paper for the reading list? Open a pull request.
- Found it useful? A ⭐ is appreciated and helps others discover it.
Contributions should stay original and cite only public sources (arXiv, textbooks, well-known reviews).
- Notes & writing (the tutorial prose, the reading-list annotations): Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).
- Code (any scripts or examples): MIT License.
- Linked papers remain under the copyright of their respective authors and publishers, they are referenced here, not redistributed.
📫 Questions or suggestions: open an issue · maintained under the handle Iamsohungrynow.