We study the dynamics of a general quartic interaction Hamiltonian under the influence of dissipation and non-classical driving. In this scenario, we show that an effective Hartree-typedecoupling yields a good approximation to the dynamics of the system. We find that the stationary states are squeezed vacuum states of the non-interacting system which are enhanced by the Q-factor of the cavity. We show that this effective interaction could be realised with a cascaded superconducting cavity-qubit system in the strong dispersive regime in a setup similar to recent experiments. The qubit non-linearity, therefore, does not significantly influence the highly squeezed intracavity microwave field but, for a range of parameters, enables quantum state tomography of the cavity.
Combining superconducting qubits with mesoscopic devices that carry topological states of matter may lead to compact and improved qubit devices with properties useful for fault-tolerantquantum computation. Recently, a charge qubit device based on a topological superconductor circuit has been introduced where signatures of Majorana fermions could be detected spectroscopically in the transmon regime. This device stores quantum information in coherent superpositions of fermion parity states originating from the Majorana fermions, generating a highly isolated qubit whose coherence time could be greatly enhanced. We extended the conventional semi-classical method and obtained analytical derivations for strong transmon-photon coupling. The analytical challenge is rendered tractable via a formalism based on the WKB method that allows to extract the energy eigenstates of the qubit and its dipole matrix elements. Using this formalism, we study the effect of the Majorana fermions on the quantum electrodynamics of the device embedded within an optical cavity and develop protocols to initialise, control and measure the parity states. We show that, remarkably, the parity eigenvalue can be detected via dispersive shifts of the optical cavity in the strong coupling regime and its state can be coherently manipulated via a second order sideband transition.
We analyse the transmon regime Hamiltonian of a Cooper-Pair-Box where the superconducting phase difference is coupled to the zero energy parity states that arise from Majorana quasi-particles.We investigate the level structure and properties of the transmon qubit in this regime where even a small coupling causes hybridization of different transmon-parity states without compromising the suppression of charge dispersion. We show that the microwave photon-qubit coupling is sensitive to the gate bias and all the energy scales of the Hamiltonian. As well as a probe for topological-superconductor excitations, we propose that this type of device could be used to realise a high coherence tunable four-level system in the superconducting circuits architecture.
Photons are ideal carriers for quantum information as they can have a long
coherence time and can be transmitted over long distances. These properties are
a consequence of their weakinteractions within a nearly linear medium. To
create and manipulate nonclassical states of light, however, one requires a
strong, nonlinear interaction at the single photon level. One approach to
generate suitable interactions is to couple photons to atoms, as in the strong
coupling regime of cavity QED systems. In these systems, however, one only
indirectly controls the quantum state of the light by manipulating the atoms. A
direct photon-photon interaction occurs in so-called Kerr media, which
typically induce only weak nonlinearity at the cost of significant loss. So
far, it has not been possible to reach the single-photon Kerr regime, where the
interaction strength between individual photons exceeds the loss rate. Here,
using a 3D circuit QED architecture, we engineer an artificial Kerr medium
which enters this regime and allows the observation of new quantum effects. We
realize a Gedankenexperiment proposed by Yurke and Stoler, in which the
collapse and revival of a coherent state can be observed. This time evolution
is a consequence of the quantization of the light field in the cavity and the
nonlinear interaction between individual photons. During this evolution
non-classical superpositions of coherent states, i.e. multi-component
Schroedinger cat states, are formed. We visualize this evolution by measuring
the Husimi Q-function and confirm the non-classical properties of these
transient states by Wigner tomography. The single-photon Kerr effect could be
employed in QND measurement of photons, single photon generation, autonomous
quantum feedback schemes and quantum logic operations.
In this book chapter we analyze the high excitation nonlinear response of the
Jaynes-Cummings model in quantum optics when the qubit and cavity are strongly
coupled. We focus on theparameter ranges appropriate for transmon qubits in
the circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture, where the system behaves
essentially as a nonlinear quantum oscillator and we analyze the quantum and
semi-classical dynamics. One of the central motivations is that under strong
excitation tones, the nonlinear response can lead to qubit quantum state
discrimination and we present initial results for the cases when the qubit and
cavity are on resonance or far off-resonance (dispersive).