Superconducting qubit-oscillator circuit beyond the ultrastrong-coupling regime

  1. Fumiki Yoshihara,
  2. Tomoko Fuse,
  3. Sahel Ashhab,
  4. Kosuke Kakuyanagi,
  5. Shiro Saito,
  6. and Kouichi Semba
To control light-matter interaction at the single-quantum level in cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity-QED) or circuit-QED, strong coupling between the light and matter components
is indispensable. Specifically, the coupling rate g must be larger than the decay rates. If g is increased further and becomes as large as the frequencies of light and matter excitations, the energy eigenstates including the ground state are predicted to be highly entangled. This qualitatively new coupling regime can be called the deep strong-coupling regime. One approach toward the deep strong-coupling regime is to use huge numbers of identical systems to take advantage of ensemble enhancement. With the emergence of so-called macroscopic artificial atoms, superconducting qubits for example, it has become possible for a single artificial atom to realize ultrastrong coupling, where ℏg exceeds ~10% of the energies of the qubit ℏωq and the harmonic oscillator ℏωo. By making use of the macroscopic magnetic dipole moment of a flux qubit, large zero-point-fluctuation current of an LC oscillator, and large Josephson inductance of a coupler junction, we have realized circuits in the deep strong-coupling regime, where g/ωo ranges from 0.72 to 1.34 and g/ωq >> 1. Using energy spectroscopy measurements, we have observed unconventional transition spectra between Schrodinger cat-like energy eigenstates. These states involve quantum superpositions of Fock states with phase-space displacements of ±g/ωo and remarkably survive with environmental noise. Our results provide a basis for ground-state-based entangled-pair generation and open a new direction in circuit-QED.

Improving the lifetime of the NV center ensemble coupled with a superconducting flux qubit by applying magnetic fields

  1. Yuichiro Matsuzaki,
  2. Xiaobo Zhu,
  3. Kosuke Kakuyanagi,
  4. Hiraku Toida,
  5. Takaaki Shimooka,
  6. Norikazu Mizuochi,
  7. Kae Nemoto,
  8. Kouichi Semba,
  9. W. J. Munro,
  10. Hiroshi Yamaguchi,
  11. and Shiro Saito
One of the promising systems to realize quantum computation is a hybrid system where a superconducting flux qubit plays a role of a quantum processor and the NV center ensemble is used
as a quantum memory. We have theoretically and experimentally studied the effect of magnetic fields on this hybrid system, and found that the lifetime of the vacuum Rabi oscillation is improved by applying a few mT magnetic field to the NV center ensemble. Here, we construct a theoretical model to reproduce the vacuum Rabi oscillations with/without magnetic fields applied to the NV centers, and we determine the reason why magnetic fields can affect the coherent properties of the NV center ensemble. From our theoretical analysis, we quantitatively show that the magnetic fields actually suppress the inhomogeneous broadening from the strain in the NV centers.

Towards Realizing a Quantum Memory for a Superconducting Qubit: Storage and Retrieval of quantum states

  1. Shiro Saito,
  2. Xiaobo Zhu,
  3. Robert Amsüss,
  4. Yuichiro Matsuzaki,
  5. Kosuke Kakuyanagi,
  6. Takaaki Shimo-Oka,
  7. Norikazu Mizuochi,
  8. Kae Nemoto,
  9. William J. Munro,
  10. and Kouichi Semba
We have built a hybrid system composed of a superconducting flux qubit (the processor) and an ensemble of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond (the memory) that can be directly coupled
to one another and demonstrated how information can be transferred from the flux qubit to the memory, stored and subsequently retrieved. We have established the coherence properties of the memory, and succeeded in creating an entangled state between the processor and memory, demonstrating how the entangled state’s coherence is preserved. Our results are a significant step towards using an electron spin ensemble as a quantum memory for superconducting qubits.