Microwave photon Fock state generation by stimulated Raman adiabatic passage

Autonomous Stabilization of Fock States in an Oscillator against Multiphoton Losses

Fock states with a well-defined number of photons in an oscillator have shown a wide range of applications in quantum information science. Nonetheless, their usefulness has been marred by single and multiphoton losses due to unavoidable environment-induced dissipation. Though several dissipation engineering methods have been developed to counteract the leading single-photon-loss error, averting multiple-photon losses remains elusive. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a dissipation engineering method that autonomously stabilizes multiphoton Fock states against losses of multiple photons using a cascaded selective photon-addition operation in a superconducting quantum circuit. Through measuring the photon-number populations and Wigner tomography of the oscillator states, we observe a prolonged preservation of nonclassical Wigner negativities for the stabilized Fock states |N⟩ with N=1, 2, 3 for a duration of about 10 ms. Furthermore, the dissipation engineering method demonstrated here also facilitates the implementation of a nonunitary operation for resetting a binomially encoded logical qubit. These results highlight potential applications in error-correctable quantum information processing against multiple-photon-loss errors.

Dual-rail encoding with superconducting cavities

The design of quantum hardware that reduces and mitigates errors is essential for practical quantum error correction (QEC) and useful quantum computation. To this end, we introduce the circuit-Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) dual-rail qubit in which our physical qubit is encoded in the single-photon subspace, [Formula: see text], of two superconducting microwave cavities. The dominant photon loss errors can be detected and converted into erasure errors, which are in general much easier to correct. In contrast to linear optics, a circuit-QED implementation of the dual-rail code offers unique capabilities. Using just one additional transmon ancilla per dual-rail qubit, we describe how to perform a gate-based set of universal operations that includes state preparation, logical readout, and parametrizable single and two-qubit gates. Moreover, first-order hardware errors in the cavities and the transmon can be detected and converted to erasure errors in all operations, leaving background Pauli errors that are orders of magnitude smaller. Hence, the dual-rail cavity qubit exhibits a favorable hierarchy of error rates and is expected to perform well below the relevant QEC thresholds with today's coherence times.

Proposal for a Deterministic Single-Atom Source of Quasisuperradiant N-Photon Pulses

We propose a single-atom, cavity quantum electrodynamics system, compatible with recently demonstrated, fiber-integrated micro- and nanocavity setups, for the on-demand production of optical number-state, 0N-state, and binomial-code-state pulses. The scheme makes use of Raman transitions within an entire atomic ground-state hyperfine level and operates with laser and cavity fields detuned from the atomic transition by much more than the excited-state hyperfine splitting. This enables reduction of the dynamics to that of a simple, cavity-damped Tavis-Cummings model with the collective spin determined by the total angular momentum of the ground hyperfine level.

Robust stimulated Raman shortcut-to-adiabatic passage with invariant-based optimal control

The stimulated Raman adiabatic passage shows an efficient technique that accurately transfers population between two discrete quantum states with the same parity in three-level quantum systems based on adiabatic evolution. This technique has widely theoretical and experimental applications in many fields of physics, chemistry, and beyond. Here, we present a general approach to robust stimulated Raman shortcut-to-adiabatic passage with invariant-based optimal control. By controlling the dynamical process, we inversely design a family of Hamiltonians with non-divergent Rabi frequencies that can realize fast and accurate population transfer from the first to the third level, while the systematic errors are largely suppressed in general. Furthermore, a detailed trade-off relation between the population of the intermediate state and the amplitudes of Rabi frequencies in the transfer process is illustrated. These results provide an optimal route toward manipulating the evolution of three-level quantum systems in future quantum information processing.

Deterministic Generation of Large Fock States

We present a protocol to deterministically prepare the electromagnetic field in a large photon number state. The field starts in a coherent state and, through resonant interaction with one or few two-level systems, it evolves into a coherently displaced Fock state without any postselection. We show the feasibility of the scheme under realistic parameters. The presented method opens a door to reach Fock states, with n∼100 and optimal fidelities above 70%, blurring the line between macroscopic and quantum states of the field.

Quantum State Engineering by Shortcuts to Adiabaticity in Interacting Spin-Boson Systems

We present a fast and robust framework to prepare nonclassical states of a bosonic mode exploiting a coherent exchange of excitations with a two-level system ruled by a Jaynes-Cummings interaction mechanism. Our protocol, which is built on shortcuts to adiabaticity, allows for the generation of arbitrary Fock states of the bosonic mode, as well as coherent quantum superpositions of a Schrödinger cat-like form. In addition, we show how to obtain a class of photon-shifted states where the vacuum population is removed, a result akin to photon addition, but displaying more nonclassicality than standard photon-added states. Owing to the ubiquity of the spin-boson interaction that we consider, our proposal is amenable for implementations in state-of-the-art experiments.

Entanglement Control of Two-Level Atoms in Dissipative Cavities

An open quantum bipartite system consisting of two independent two-level atoms interacting nonlinearly with a two-mode electromagnetic cavity field is investigated by proposing a suitable non-Hermitian generalization of the Hamiltonian. The mathematical procedure of obtaining the corresponding wave function of the system is clearly given. Pancharatnam phase is studied to give a precise information about the required initial system state, which is related to artificial phase jumps, to control the degree of entanglement (DEM) and get the highest concurrence. We discuss the effect of time-variation coupling, and dissipation of both atoms and cavity. The effect of the time-variation function appears as frequency modulation (FM) effect in the radio waves. Concurrence rapidly reaches the disentangled state (death of entanglement) by increasing the effect of field decay. On the contrary, the atomic decay has no effect.

High-Power Collective Charging of a Solid-State Quantum Battery

Quantum information theorems state that it is possible to exploit collective quantum resources to greatly enhance the charging power of quantum batteries (QBs) made of many identical elementary units. We here present and solve a model of a QB that can be engineered in solid-state architectures. It consists of N two-level systems coupled to a single photonic mode in a cavity. We contrast this collective model ("Dicke QB"), whereby entanglement is genuinely created by the common photonic mode, to the one in which each two-level system is coupled to its own separate cavity mode ("Rabi QB"). By employing exact diagonalization, we demonstrate the emergence of a quantum advantage in the charging power of Dicke QBs, which scales like sqrt[N] for N≫1.

Unity-Efficiency Parametric Down-Conversion via Amplitude Amplification

We propose an optical scheme, employing optical parametric down-converters interlaced with nonlinear sign gates (NSGs), that completely converts an n-photon Fock-state pump to n signal-idler photon pairs when the down-converters' crystal lengths are chosen appropriately. The proof of this assertion relies on amplitude amplification, analogous to that employed in Grover search, applied to the full quantum dynamics of single-mode parametric down-conversion. When we require that all Grover iterations use the same crystal, and account for potential experimental limitations on crystal-length precision, our optimized conversion efficiencies reach unity for 1≤n≤5, after which they decrease monotonically for n values up to 50, which is the upper limit of our numerical dynamics evaluations. Nevertheless, our conversion efficiencies remain higher than those for a conventional (no NSGs) down-converter.