Dressed-state relaxation in coupled qubits as a source of two-qubit gate errors

Understanding error mechanisms in two-qubit gate operations is essential for building high-fidelity quantum processors. While prior studies predominantly treat dephasing noise as either Markovian or predominantly low-frequency, realistic qubit environments exhibit structured, frequency-dependent spectra. Here we demonstrate that noise at frequencies matching the dressed-state energy splitting–set by the inter-qubit coupling strength g–induces a distinct relaxation channel that degrades gate performance. Through combined theoretical analysis and experimental verification on superconducting qubits with engineered noise spectra, we show that two-qubit gate errors scale predictably with the noise power spectral density at frequency 2g, extending the concept of $T_{1\rho }$ relaxation to interacting systems. This frequency-selective relaxation mechanism, universal across platforms, enriches our understanding of decoherence pathways during gate operations. The same mechanism sets coherence limits for dual-rail or singlet-triplet encodings.