Entanglement is a genuine quantum mechanical property and the key resource in currently developed quantum technologies. Sharing this fragile property between superconducting microwavecircuits and optical or atomic systems would enable new functionalities but has been hindered by the tremendous energy mismatch of ∼105 and the resulting mutually imposed loss and noise. In this work we create and verify entanglement between microwave and optical fields in a millikelvin environment. Using an optically pulsed superconducting electro-optical device, we deterministically prepare an itinerant microwave-optical state that is squeezed by 0.72+0.31−0.25\,dB and violates the Duan-Simon separability criterion by >5 standard deviations. This establishes the long-sought non-classical correlations between superconducting circuits and telecom wavelength light with wide-ranging implications for hybrid quantum networks in the context of modularization, scaling, sensing and cross-platform verification.
Recent quantum technology advances have established precise quantum control of various microscopic systems involving optical, microwave, spin, and mechanical degrees of freedom. Itis a timely challenge to realize hybrid quantum devices that leverage the full potential of each component. Interfaces based on cryogenic cavity electro-optic systems are particularly promising, due to the direct interaction between microwave and optical fields in the quantum regime. However, low coupling rates and excess back-action from the pump laser have precluded quantum optical control of superconducting circuits. Here we report the coherent control of a microwave cavity mode using laser light in a multimode device at millikelvin temperature with near unity cooperativity, as manifested by the observation of electro-optically induced transparency and absorption due to the electro-optical dynamical back-action. We show that both the stationary and instantaneous pulsed response of the microwave and optical modes comply with the coherent electro-optical interaction and reveal only minuscule amount of excess back-action with an unanticipated time delay. Our demonstration represents a key step to attain full quantum control of microwave circuits using laser light, with possible applications ranging from optical quantum non-demolition measurements of microwave fields beyond the standard quantum limit, optical microwave ground state cooling and squeezing, to quantum transduction, entanglement generation and hybrid quantum networks.
The ability to control the direction of scattered light in integrated devices is crucial to provide the flexibility and scalability for a wide range of on-chip applications, such asintegrated photonics, quantum information processing and nonlinear optics. In the optical and microwave frequency ranges tunable directionality can be achieved by applying external magnetic fields, that modify optical selection rules, by using nonlinear effects, or interactions with vibrations. However, these approaches are less suitable to control propagation of microwave photons inside integrated superconducting quantum devices, that is highly desirable. Here, we demonstrate tunable directional scattering with just two transmon qubits coupled to a transmission line based on periodically modulated transition frequency. By changing the symmetry of the modulation, governed by the relative phase between the local modulation tones, we achieve directional forward or backward photon scattering.
The inductively shunted transmon (IST) is a superconducting qubit with exponentially suppressed fluxon transitions and a plasmon spectrum approximating that of the transmon. It sharesmany characteristics with the transmon but offers charge offset insensitivity for all levels and precise flux tunability with quadratic flux noise suppression. In this work we propose and realize IST qubits deep in the transmon limit where the large geometric inductance acts as a mere perturbation. With a flux dispersion of only 5.1 MHz we reach the ’sweet-spot everywhere‘ regime of a SQUID device with a stable coherence time over a full flux quantum. Close to the flux degeneracy point the device reveals tunneling physics between the two quasi-degenerate ground states with typical observed lifetimes on the order of minutes. In the future, this qubit regime could be used to avoid leakage to unconfined transmon states in high-power read-out or driven-dissipative bosonic qubit realizations. Moreover, the combination of well controllable plasmon transitions together with stable fluxon states in a single device might offer a way forward towards improved qubit encoding schemes.
We present the fabrication and characterization of transmon qubits formed from aluminum Josephson junctions on two different silicon-based substrates: (i) high-resistivity silicon (Si)and (ii) silicon-on-insulator (SOI). Key to the qubit fabrication process is the use of an anhydrous hydrofluoric vapor process which removes silicon surface oxides without attacking aluminum, and in the case of SOI substrates, selectively removes the lossy buried oxide underneath the qubit region. For qubits with a transition frequency of approximately 5GHz we find qubit lifetimes and coherence times comparable to those attainable on sapphire substrates (T1,Si=27μs, T2,Si=6.6μs; T1,SOI=3.5μs, T2,SOI=2.2μs). This qubit fabrication process in principle permits co-fabrication of silicon photonic and mechanical elements, providing a route towards chip-scale integration of electro-opto-mechanical transducers for quantum networking of superconducting microwave quantum circuits.
Linking classical microwave electrical circuits to the optical telecommunication band is at the core of modern communication. Future quantum information networks will require coherentmicrowave-to-optical conversion to link electronic quantum processors and memories via low-loss optical telecommunication networks. Efficient conversion can be achieved with electro-optical modulators operating at the single microwave photon level. In the standard electro-optic modulation scheme this is impossible because both, up- and downconverted, sidebands are necessarily present. Here we demonstrate true single sideband up- or downconversion in a triply resonant whispering gallery mode resonator by explicitly addressing modes with asymmetric free spectral range. Compared to previous experiments, we show a three orders of magnitude improvement of the electro-optical conversion efficiency reaching 0.1% photon number conversion for a 10GHz microwave tone at 0.42mW of optical pump power. The presented scheme is fully compatible with existing superconducting 3D circuit quantum electrodynamics technology and can be used for non-classical state conversion and communication. Our conversion bandwidth is larger than 1MHz and not fundamentally limited.
We report the experimental observation, and a theoretical explanation, of
collective suppression of linewidths for multiple superconducting qubits
coupled to a good cavity. This demonstrateshow strong qubit-cavity coupling
can significantly modify the dephasing and dissipation processes that might be
expected for individual qubits, and can potentially improve coherence times in
many-body circuit QED.
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=3two-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%.