Four-channel System for Characterization of Josephson Parametric Amplifiers

  1. Boris I. Ivanov,
  2. Jinmyeong Kim,
  3. Çağlar Kutlu,
  4. Arjan F. van Loo,
  5. Yasunobu Nakamura,
  6. Sergey V. Uchaikin,
  7. Seonjeong Oh,
  8. Violeta Gkika,
  9. Andrei Matlashov,
  10. Woohyun Chung,
  11. and Yannis K. Semertzidis
The axion search experiments based on haloscopes at the Center for Axion and Precision Physics Research (CAPP) of the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea are performed
in the frequency range from 1 GHz to 6 GHz. In order to perform the experiments in a strong magnetic field of 12 T and a large-volume cavity of close to 40 liters, we use He wet dilution refrigerators with immersed superconducting magnets. The measurements require continuous operation for months without interruptions for microwave component replacements. This is achieved by using different cryogenic engineering approaches including microwave RF-switching. The critical components, defining the scanning rate and the sensitivity of the setup, are the Josephson parametric amplifiers (JPA) and cryogenic low noise amplifiers (cLNA) based on high-electron-mobility-transistor (HEMT) technology. It is desirable for both devices to have a wide frequency range and low noise close to the quantum limit for the JPA. In this paper, we show a recent design of a 4-channel measurement setup for JPA and HEMT measurements. The setup is based on a 4-channel wideband noise source (NS) and is used for both JPA and HEMT gain and noise measurements. The setup is placed at 20 mK inside the dry dilution refrigerator. The NS is thermally decoupled from the environment using plastic spacers, superconducting wires and superconducting coaxial cables. We show the gain and noise temperature curves measured for 4 HEMT amplifiers and 2 JPAs in one cool-down

Breaking the trade-off between fast control and long lifetime of a superconducting qubit

  1. Shingo Kono,
  2. Kazuki Koshino,
  3. Dany Lachance-Quirion,
  4. Arjan F. Van Loo,
  5. Yutaka Tabuchi,
  6. Atsushi Noguchi,
  7. and Yasunobu Nakamura
The rapid development in designs and fabrication techniques of superconducting qubits has helped making coherence times of qubits longer. In the near future, however, the radiative
decay of a qubit into its control line will be a fundamental limitation, imposing a trade-off between fast control and long lifetime of the qubit. In this work, we successfully break this trade-off by strongly coupling another superconducting qubit along the control line. This second qubit, which we call a Josephson quantum filter~(JQF), prevents the qubit from emitting microwave photons and thus suppresses its relaxation, while faithfully transmitting large-amplitude control microwave pulses due to the saturation of the quantum filter, enabling fast qubit control. We observe an improvement of the qubit relaxation time without a reduction of the Rabi frequency. This device could potentially help in the realization of a large-scale superconducting quantum information processor in terms of the heating of the qubit environments and the crosstalk between qubits.

Photon-mediated interactions between distant artificial atoms

  1. Arjan F. van Loo,
  2. Arkady Fedorov,
  3. Kevin Lalumière,
  4. Barry C. Sanders,
  5. Alexandre Blais,
  6. and Andreas Wallraff
Photon-mediated interactions between atoms are of fundamental importance in quantum optics, quantum simulations and quantum information processing. The exchange of real and virtual
photons between atoms gives rise to non-trivial interactions the strength of which decreases rapidly with distance in three dimensions. Here we study much stronger photon mediated interactions using two superconducting qubits in an open onedimensional transmission line. Making use of the unique possibility to tune these qubits by more than a quarter of their transition frequency we observe both coherent exchange interactions at an effective separation of 3λ/4 and the creation of super- and sub-radiant states at a separation of one photon wavelength λ. This system is highly suitable for exploring collective atom/photon interactions and applications in quantum communication technology.

Input-output theory for waveguide QED with an ensemble of inhomogeneous atoms

  1. Kevin Lalumière,
  2. Barry C. Sanders,
  3. Arjan F. van Loo,
  4. Arkady Fedorov,
  5. Andreas Wallraff,
  6. and Alexandre Blais
We study the collective effects that emerge in waveguide quantum electrodynamics where several (artificial) atoms are coupled to a one-dimensional (1D) superconducting transmission
line. Since single microwave photons can travel without loss for a long distance along the line, real and virtual photons emitted by one atom can be reabsorbed or scattered by a second atom. Depending on the distance between the atoms, this collective effect can lead to super- and subradiance or to a coherent exchange-type interaction between the atoms. Changing the artificial atoms transition frequencies, something which can be easily done with superconducting qubits (two levels artificial atoms), is equivalent to changing the atom-atom separation and thereby opens the possibility to study the characteristics of these collective effects. To study this waveguide quantum electrodynamics system, we extend previous work and present an effective master equation valid for an ensemble of inhomogeneous atoms. Using input-output theory, we compute analytically and numerically the elastic and inelastic scattering and show how these quantities reveal information about collective effects. These theoretical results are compatible with recent experimental results using transmon qubits coupled to a superconducting one-dimensional transmission line [A.F. van Loo {\it et al.} (2013)].

Demonstrating W-type Entanglement of Dicke-States in Resonant Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics

  1. Jonas A. Mlynek,
  2. Abdufarrukh A. Abdumalikov Jr,
  3. Johannes M. Fink,
  4. Lars Steffen,
  5. Matthias Baur,
  6. Christian Lang,
  7. Arjan F. van Loo,
  8. and Andreas Wallraff
Nonlinearity and entanglement are two important properties by which physical systems can be identified as non-classical. We study the dynamics of the resonant interaction of up to N=3
two-level systems and a single mode of the electromagnetic field sharing a single excitation dynamically. We observe coherent vacuum Rabi oscillations and their nonlinear speed up by tracking the populations of all qubits and the resonator in time. We use quantum state tomography to show explicitly that the dynamics generates maximally entangled states of the W class in a time limited only by the collective interaction rate. We use an entanglement witness and the threetangle to characterize the state whose fidelity F=78% is limited in our experiments by crosstalk arising during the simultaneous qubit manipulations which is absent in a sequential approach with F=91%.