Speed limits of two-qutrit gates

The speed of elementary quantum gates sets a limit on the speed at which quantum circuits can be applied and, as a result, the size of the computations that can be performed on a quantum computer. This limitation stems from the fact that present-day quantum hardware systems have finite coherence times that limit the total computation time. The speeds of qubit gates in various hardware settings have been well studied over the past few decades. The recent interest in multi-level quantum systems naturally creates a need for similar investigations of the speeds of multi-level or qudit gates. In this work, we perform an empirical study of the speed limit for the three-level or qutrit CZ gate. Our analysis focuses on a theoretical model for capacitively coupled superconducting transmons but can be extended to other systems. We generate CZ gate protocols using optimal control theory techniques and observe when the fidelity crosses certain thresholds. In addition to the empirical approach, we derive an analytical speed limit for the qutrit CZ gate using traditional quantum speed limit techniques. We compare the speed limits derived using these two different approaches and discuss the gap that remains between them. We also compare the time needed to implement the qutrit CZ gate with its qubit counterpart.