Prospects for Parametric Amplifiers in Large-scale Superconducting Quantum Computing

Fast, high-fidelity measurement of qubit states is critical for quantum computing, especially in superconducting qubits where real-time feedback is conditioned on the measurement of ancillary qubits for error correction. While the preamplifiers that we use for this purpose, superconducting parametric amplifiers, have played a transformative role in moving superconducting quantum information and computing forward, there is still much room for improvement. Here, we discuss several practical challenges in scaling these devices to meet the needs of large-scale quantum processing.