Characterization and Comparison of Energy Relaxation in Fluxonium Qubits

Fluxonium superconducting qubits have demonstrated long coherence times and high single- and two-qubit gate fidelities, making them a favorable building block for superconducting quantum processors. We investigate the dominant limitations to fluxonium qubit energy relaxation time T₁ using a set of eight planar, aluminum-on-silicon qubits. We find that a circuit-based model for capacitive dielectric loss best captures the frequency dependence of T₁, which we analyze within both a two-level and a six-level energy relaxation model. We convert the measured T₁ into an effective capacitive quality factor Q_C^eff to compare qubits on equal footing, accounting for independently estimated contributions from 1/f flux noise and radiative loss to the control and readout circuitry. We apply this methodology to compare qubits from two fabrication processes: a baseline process and one that applies a fluorine-based wet treatment prior to Josephson junction deposition. We resolve a small improvement of 13.8 $pm$ 8.4$%in the process meanQ_\mathrm{C}^{\mathrm{eff}}$, indicating that the fluorine treatment may have reduced loss from the metal-substrate interface, but did not address the primary source of loss in these fluxonium qubits.