Fast generation of Schrödinger cat states in a Kerr-tunable superconducting resonator

  1. X.L. He,
  2. Yong Lu,
  3. D.Q. Bao,
  4. Hang Xue,
  5. W.B. Jiang,
  6. Zhen Wang,
  7. A.F. Roudsari,
  8. Per Delsing,
  9. J. S. Tsai,
  10. and Z. R. Lin
Schrödinger cat states, quantum superpositions of macroscopically distinct classical states, are an important resource for quantum communication, quantum metrology and quantum computation.
Especially, cat states in a phase space protected against phase-flip errors can be used as a logical qubit. However, cat states, normally generated in three-dimensional cavities, are facing the challenges of scalability and controllability. Here, we present a novel strategy to generate and store cat states in a coplanar superconducting circuit by the fast modulation of Kerr nonlinearity. At the Kerr-free work point, our cat states are passively preserved due to the vanishing Kerr effect. We are able to prepare a 2-component cat state in our chip-based device with a fidelity reaching 89.1% under a 96 ns gate time. Our scheme shows an excellent route to constructing a chip-based bosonic quantum processor.