Namaste! Hi! I’m Parth.
I’m a PhD student at Princeton, and I spend my days building and studying tiny electrical circuits that behave in very un-everyday ways. When these circuits are cooled to near absolute zero, they can act like quantum objects - the kind people hope to use for quantum computing.
A lot of my work is about a surprisingly human problem: how do you “ask” a quantum system what it’s doing without accidentally changing the answer?
In my experiments, I work with a particular kind of superconducting qubit called fluxonium. One thing that makes it fascinating (and occasionally maddening) is that the act of measurement isn’t passive. The microwave signals we use to read out the qubit can also nudge it into different states - almost like shining a bright flashlight on a delicate animal and watching it move because of the light. I try to understand when and why that happens, how to prevent it when it’s harmful, and how to use it when it’s useful.
I also care a lot about the “environment” around these devices: every wire, material, and electromagnetic mode can whisper noise into the circuit. That noise leaves fingerprints in how often the qubit jumps between energy levels. A big part of my research is learning to read those fingerprints - to map what kinds of noise are present, at what frequencies, and what they mean for building better quantum hardware.
On a typical week you’ll find me bouncing between modeling and measurement: writing simulations, debugging code, tuning microwave pulses, staring at plots, and trying to turn messy data into a clean story.
If you’re curious about superconducting qubits, measurement, noise, or just what day-to-day research looks like in a quantum lab, feel free to reach out.