Applying Electric and Magnetic Field Bias in a 3D Superconducting Waveguide Cavity with High Quality Factor

  1. M. Stammeier,
  2. S. Garcia,
  3. and A. Wallraff
Three-dimensional microwave waveguide cavities are essential tools for many cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments. However, the need to control quantum emitters with dc magnetic
fields inside the cavity often limits such experiments to normal-conducting cavities with relatively low quality factors of about 104. Similarly, controlling quantum emitters with dc electric fields in normal- and superconducting waveguide cavities has so far been difficult, because the insertion of dc electrodes has strongly limited the quality factor. Here, we present a method to apply dc electric fields within a superconducting waveguide cavity, which is based on the insertion of dc electrodes at the nodes of the microwave electric field. Moreover, we present a method to apply dc magnetic fields within the same cavity by trapping the magnetic flux in holes positioned in facing walls of the cavity. We demonstrate that the TE301 mode of such a superconducting, rectangular cavity made from niobium maintains a high internal quality factor of Qint∼1.7⋅106 at the few photon level and a base temperature of 3 K. A cloud of Rydberg atoms coupled to the microwave electric field of the cavity is used to probe the applied dc electric and magnetic fields via the quadratic Stark effect and the Zeeman effect, respectively.

Measuring the dispersive frequency shift of a rectangular microwave cavity induced by an ensemble of Rydberg atoms

  1. M. Stammeier,
  2. S. Garcia,
  3. T. Thiele,
  4. J. Deiglmayr,
  5. J. A. Agner,
  6. H. Schmutz,
  7. F. Merkt,
  8. and A. Wallraff
In recent years the interest in studying interactions of Rydberg atoms or ensembles thereof with optical and microwave frequency fields has steadily increased, both in the context of
basic research and for potential applications in quantum information processing. We present measurements of the dispersive interaction between an ensemble of helium atoms in the 37s Rydberg state and a single resonator mode by extracting the amplitude and phase change of a weak microwave probe tone transmitted through the cavity. The results are in quantitative agreement with predictions made on the basis of the dispersive Tavis-Cummings Hamiltonian. We study this system with the goal of realizing a hybrid between superconducting circuits and Rydberg atoms. We measure maximal collective coupling strengths of 1 MHz, corresponding to 3*10^3 Rydberg atoms coupled to the cavity. As expected, the dispersive shift is found to be inversely proportional to the atom-cavity detuning and proportional to the number of Rydberg atoms. This possibility of measuring the number of Rydberg atoms in a nondestructive manner is relevant for quantitatively evaluating scattering cross sections in experiments with Rydberg atoms.