Preparation of multi-photon Fock states and quantum entanglement properties in circuit QED

We demonstrate the controllable generation of multi-photon Fock states in circuit quantum electrodynamics （circuit QED）. The external bias flux regulated by a counter can effectively adjust the bias time on each superconducting flux qubit so that each flux qubit can pass in turn through the circuit cavity and thereby avoid the effect of decoherence. We further investigate the quantum correlation dynamics of coupling superconducting qubits in a Fock state. The results reveal that the lower the photon number of the light field in the number state, the stronger the interaction between qubits is, then the more beneficial to maintaining entanglement between qubits it will be.     

Theory of microwave parametric down-conversion and squeezing using circuit QED

We study theoretically the parametric down-conversion and squeezing of microwaves using cavity quantum electrodynamics of a superconducting Cooper-pair box (CPB) qubit located inside a transmission line resonator. The nonlinear susceptibility chi2 describing three-wave mixing can be tuned by dc gate voltage applied to the CPB and vanishes by symmetry at the charge degeneracy point. We show that the coherent coupling of different cavity modes through the qubit can generate a squeezed state. Based on parameters realized in recent successful circuit QED experiments, squeezing of 95% approximately 13 dB below the vacuum noise level should be readily achievable.     

Scheme for Concentration of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">W</Emphasis> Class State via Cavity Decay

We propose a concentration scheme of the W class state via cavity QED technique. In our scheme the influences of cavity decay and atomic spontaneous emission have been considered. Furthermore, the atomic spontaneous emission has been suppressed by using non-radiative transitions in atoms with three-level structure, and the photonic qubit is used as flying qubit and atomic qubit as stationary qubit. Therefore our scheme is comparatively easy to realize within techniques presently available.     

Improved Superconducting Qubit State Readout by Path Interference

High fidelity single shot qubit state readout is essential for many quantum information processing protocols. In superconducting quantum circuit, the qubit state is usually determined by detecting the dispersive frequency shift of a microwave cavity from either transmission or reflection. We demonstrate the use of constructive interference between the transmitted and reflected signal to optimize the qubit state readout, with which we find a better resolved state discrimination and an improved qubit readout fidelity. As a simple and convenient approach, our scheme can be combined with other qubit readout methods based on the discrimination of cavity photon states to further improve the qubit state readout.     

Hybrid quantum processors: molecular ensembles as quantum memory for solid state circuits

We investigate a hybrid quantum circuit where ensembles of cold polar molecules serve as long-lived quantum memories and optical interfaces for solid state quantum processors. The quantum memory realized by collective spin states (ensemble qubit) is coupled to a high-Q stripline cavity via microwave Raman processes. We show that, for convenient trap-surface distances of a few microm, strong coupling between the cavity and ensemble qubit can be achieved. We discuss basic quantum information protocols, including a swap from the cavity photon bus to the molecular quantum memory, and a deterministic two qubit gate. Finally, we investigate coherence properties of molecular ensemble quantum bits.     

Superconducting qubit with Purcell protection and tunable coupling

We present a superconducting qubit for the circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture that has a tunable qubit-resonator coupling strength g. This coupling can be tuned from zero to values that are comparable with other superconducting qubits. At g = 0, the qubit is in a decoherence-free subspace with respect to spontaneous emission induced by the Purcell effect. Furthermore, we show that in this decoherence-free subspace, the state of the qubit can still be measured by either a dispersive shift on the resonance frequency of the resonator or by a cycling-type measurement.     

Fast and high-fidelity generation of photonic Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states in circuit QED

A fast scheme to generate Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states between different cavities in circuit QED systems is proposed. To implement this scheme, we design a feasible experimental device with three qubits and three cavities. In this device, all the couplings between qubit and qubit, cavity and qubit are tunable and are independent with frequencies, and thus the shortcut to adiabaticity technique can be directly applied in our scheme. It is demonstrated that the GHZ state can be generated rapidly with high fidelity in our scheme.     

Generation of Entangled Coherent States in Circuit-QED

We study theoretically the generation of entangled states of microwaves in a circuit quantum electrodynamics (QED) system. Our system includes a transmission-line resonator and a Cooper-pair box which acts as an artificial atom. It is shown that in the dispersive regime of the circuit-QED system, a cross-Kerr interaction can be obtained by properly preparing the initial state of the qubit. Based on this cross-Kerr interaction, we show that the coherent coupling of the two lowest-lying cavity modes through the qubit can generate a macroscopic entangled state.     

Simple schemes for generation of W-type multipartite entangled states and realization of quantum- information concentration

We propose simple schemes for generating W-type multipartite entangled states in cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED). Our schemes involve a largely detuned interaction of Λ-type three-level atoms with a single-mode cavity field and a classical laser, and both the symmetric and asymmetric W states can be created in a single step. Our schemes are insensitive to both the cavity decay and atomic spontaneous emission. With the above system, we also propose a scheme for realizing quantum-information concentration which is the reverse process of quantum cloning. In this scheme, quantum-information originally coming from a single qubit, but now distributed into many qubits, is concentrated back to a single qubit in only one step.     

Information entropy and entanglement of a superconducting qubit coupled to a cavity field with its spontaneous decay

The quantum entanglement between superconducting qubit and cavity field is described quantitatively in the presence of spontaneous decay. Depending on how how a system is quantum correlated with its environment, the entanglement dynamics between the qubit and cavity is evaluated and investigated during the dissipative process. The motivation based on recent experiments wherein the Cooper box can be used to probe the decay of the resonator superposition state due to environmental decoherence, we theoretically investigate the dynamics of entanglement measured by the negativity. Wehrl entropy and Wehrl phase distribution of a superconducting qubit coupled to a cavity field induced by a superconducting qubit-damping reservoir governed by a master equation.     

Scalable preparation of three-atom and four-atom W states via atom-cavity-laser interaction

We propose the optical generation of W states for three atomic and four atomic qubits, with each qubit trapped in a separate cavity and coupled to the cavity laser. A single-photon source and two classical fields are employed in the present scheme. By encoding the quantum information of each qubit on the degenerate ground states of the atom, we obtain the atomic entanglement that is relatively stable against spontaneous emission. It is demonstrated that the three- and four-atomic W states can be produced deterministically via a proper manipulation of the atom-cavity interaction sequence and time. Generalization of the present scheme to prepare multi-atomic W states is also discussed.     

Quantum-circuit guide to optical and atomic interferometry

Atomic (qubit) and optical or microwave (modal) phase-estimation protocols are placed on the same footing in terms of quantum-circuit diagrams. Circuit equivalences are used to demonstrate the equivalence of protocols that achieve the Heisenberg limit by employing entangled superpositions of Fock states, such as N00N states. The key equivalences are those that disentangle a circuit so that phase information is written exclusively on a mode or modes or on a qubit. The Fock-state-superposition phase-estimation circuits are converted to use entangled coherent-state superpositions; the resulting protocols are more amenable to realization in the lab, particularly in a qubit/cavity setting at microwave frequencies.     

Regulation of Entanglement and Geometric Quantum Discord of Hybrid Superconducting Qubits for Circuit QED

We investigate the dynamic evolution behaviors of entanglement and geometric quantum discord (GQD) of hybrid qubits in a circuit QED system. Under certain initial conditions, interactions between qubits and that between the qubit and the cavity can suppress the decay of entanglement and GQD of qubits. Under the initial condition |ψ _Q (0)〉 _I =sinα|↓↑〉+cosα|↑↓〉, such decay was avoided by increasing the coupling strength ratio between qubits and that between the qubit and the cavity. Under the aforementioned condition, the survival time of entanglement and GQD was prolonged by decreasing the coupling strength ratio between qubits and that between the qubit and the cavity.     

One-shot quantum measurement using a hysteretic dc SQUID

We propose a single shot quantum measurement to determine the state of a Josephson charge quantum bit (qubit). The qubit is a Cooper pair box and the measuring device is a two junction superconducting quantum interference device (dc SQUID). This coupled system exhibits a close analogy with a Rydberg atom in a high Q cavity, except that in the present device we benefit from the additional feature of escape from the supercurrent state by macroscopic quantum tunneling, which provides the final readout. We test the feasibility of our idea against realistic experimental circuit parameters and by analyzing the phase fluctuations of the qubit.     

Heisenberg-Type Quantum Steering by Continuous Weak Measurement in Circuit QED *

Quantum steering has attracted great interest in the last decade, especially in the celebrated optomechanical, cold atom, and quantum optical systems. However, there is still a lack of studies on quantum steering in circuit quantum electrodynamics (QED), which provides a useful experimental platform for revealing novel quantum phenomena. In this work, we investigate the steering of qubit by continuous weak measurement in a circuit QED system and establish a set of multiplicative steering inequalities based on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Different from the widely studied systems mentioned above, multiplicative steering inequalities in the circuit QED system are in various forms. We find that only a portion of them can be used to show the detection dependence of the qubit state and we also analyze the reason. Furthermore, we discuss several conditions for the violation of a typical steering inequality, including the measurement strength and methods in detecting the cavity field as well as the quantum efficiency of the detector. This preliminary work could be helpful to quantum steering experiments in circuit QED systems.     

Transferring quantum entangled states between multiple single-photon-state qubits and coherent-state qubits in circuit QED

We present a way to transfer maximally- or partially-entangled states of n single-photon-state (SPS) qubits onto ncoherent-state (CS) qubits, by employing 2nmicrowave cavities coupled to a superconducting flux qutrit. The two logic states of a SPS qubit here are represented by the vacuum state and the single-photon state of a cavity, while the two logic states of a CS qubit are encoded with two coherent states of a cavity. Because of using only one superconducting qutrit as the coupler, the circuit architecture is significantly simplified. The operation time for the state transfer does not increase with the increasing of the number of qubits. When the dissipation of the system is negligible, the quantum state can be transferred in a deterministic way since no measurement is required. Furthermore, the higher-energy intermediate level of the coupler qutrit is not excited during the entire operation and thus decoherence from the qutrit is greatly suppressed. As a specific example, we numerically demonstrate that the high-fidelity transfer of a Bell state of two SPS qubits onto two CS qubits is achievable within the present-day circuit QED technology. Finally, it is worthy to note that when the dissipation is negligible, entangled states of n CS qubits can be transferred back onto n SPS qubits by performing reverse operations. This proposal is quite general and can be extended to accomplish the same task, by employing a natural or artificial atom to couple 2nmicrowave or optical cavities.     

Quantum Information Processing in An Array of Fiber Coupled Cavities

We consider a fiber coupled cavity array. Each cavity is doped with a single two-level atom. By treating the atom-cavity systems as combined polaritonic qubits, we can transform it into a polaritonic qubit-qubit array in thedispersive regime. We show that the four fiber coupled cavity open chain and ring can both generate the four qubit W state and cluster state, and can both transfer one and two qubit arbitrary states. We also discuss the dynamical behaviors of the four fiber coupled cavity array with unequal couplings.     

Seeing Wave-Particle Superposition with Cavity Input-Output Process

We present an experimental protocol to implement quantum delay-choice experiment in the context of cavity input-output process. In our protocol, the single-atom is employed as ancillary qubit to test the wave-particle feature of a single photon. With the cavity input-output process, we show that the controlled phase shift gate between single-atom and single-photon can be naturally used to generate the controlled Hadamard gate, which thus allows us to construct the quantum circuit for realizing the quantum delay-choice experiment. We also demonstrate the photonic wavelike and particlelike states can be simultaneously observed in our platform. Our protocol may open a new prospect using cavity quantum electrodynamics system to study some counterintuitive fundamental phenomenons in quantum mechanics.     

Tunable coupling in circuit quantum electrodynamics using a superconducting charge qubit with a V-shaped energy level diagram

We introduce a new type of superconducting charge qubit that has a V-shaped energy spectrum and uses quantum interference to provide independently tunable qubit energy and coherent coupling to a superconducting cavity. Dynamic access to the strong coupling regime is demonstrated by tuning the coupling strength from less than 200 kHz to greater than 40 MHz. This tunable coupling can be used to protect the qubit from cavity-induced relaxation and avoid unwanted qubit-qubit interactions in a multiqubit system.