Waveguide quantum electrodynamics offers a wide range of possibilities to effectively engineer interactions between artificial atoms via a one-dimensional open waveguide. While these interactions have been experimentally studied in the few qubit limit, the collective properties of such systems for larger arrays of qubits in a metamaterial configuration has so far not been addressed. Here, we experimentally study a metamaterial made of eight superconducting transmon qubits with local frequency control coupled to the mode continuum of a waveguide. By consecutively tuning the qubits to a common resonance frequency we observe the formation of super- and subradiant states, as well as the emergence of a polaritonic bandgap. Making use of the qubits quantum nonlinearity, we demonstrate control over the latter by inducing a transparency window in the bandgap region of the ensemble. The circuit of this work extends experiments with one and two qubits towards a full-blown quantum metamaterial, thus paving the way for large-scale applications in superconducting waveguide quantum electrodynamics.
We study a single photon transmission through 1D N- qubit chain. The qubits are supposed to be identical with equal distance between neighbors. We express the transfer matrix of N- qubit chain in terms of Chebyshev polynomials, which allows us to obtain simple expressions for the transmission and reflection amplitudes for arbitrarily large N. If the distance between neighbor qubits is equal to half wavelength, the transmission spectrum exhibits a flat bandgap structure with very steep walls. We show that for odd N the tuning of the excitation frequency of a central qubit gives rise to the appe…
The embedding of tunable quantum emitters in a photonic bandgap structure enables the control of dissipative and dispersive interactions between emitters and their photonic bath. Operation in the transmission band, outside the gap, allows for studying waveguide quantum electrodynamics in the slow-light regime. Alternatively, tuning the emitter into the bandgap results in finite range emitter-emitter interactions via bound photonic states. Here we couple a transmon qubit to a superconducting metamaterial with a deep sub-wavelength lattice constant ($λ/60$). The metamaterial is formed by periodi…
The light propagating in a waveguide array or photonic lattice has become an ideal platform to control light and to mimic quantum behaviors in a classical system. We here investigate the propagation of light in a coupled waveguide array with one of the waveguides periodically modulated in its geometric structure or refractive index. Within the framework of Floquet theory, it is interesting to find that the light shows the localized propagation in the modulated waveguide as long as bound quasistationary modes are formed in the band-gap area of the Floquet eigenvalue spectrum. This mechanism giv…
Tailoring the interactions between quantum emitters and single photons constitutes one of the cornerstones of quantum optics. Coupling a quantum emitter to the band edge of a photonic crystal waveguide (PCW) provides a unique platform for tuning these interactions. In particular, the crossover from propagating fields $E(x) \propto e^{\pm ik_x x}$ outside the bandgap to localized fields $E(x) \propto e^{-κ_x |x|}$ within the bandgap should be accompanied by a transition from largely dissipative atom-atom interactions to a regime where dispersive atom-atom interactions are dominant. Here, we exp…
WaveguideQEDoffers the possibility of generating strong coherent atomic interactions either through appropriate atomic configurations in the dissipative regime or in the bandgap regime. In this work, we show how to harness these interactions in order to herald the generation of highly entangled atomic states, which afterwards can be mapped to generate single mode multi-photonic states with high fidelities.Weintroduce two protocols for the preparation of the atomic states, we discuss their performance and compare them to previous proposals. In particular, we show that one of them reaches high p…
We design photonic crystal waveguides with efficient chiral light--matter interfaces that can be integrated with solid-state quantum emitters. By using glide-plane-symmetric waveguides, we show that chiral light-matter interaction can exist even in the presence of slow light with slow-down factors of up to $100$ and therefore the light--matter interaction exhibits both strong Purcell enhancement and chirality. This allows for near-unity directional $β$-factors for a range of emitter positions and frequencies. Additionally, we design an efficient mode adapter to couple light from a standard nan…
Spin-dependent, directional light-matter interactions form the basis of chiral quantum networks. In the solid state, quantum emitters commonly possess circularly polarised optical transitions with spin-dependent handedness. We demonstrate numerically that spin-dependent chiral coupling can be realised by embedding such an emitter in a waveguide-coupled nanocavity, which supports two near-degenerate, orthogonally-polarised cavity modes. The chiral behaviour arises due to direction-dependent interference between the cavity modes upon coupling to two single-mode output waveguides. Notably, an exp…
Tailoring the decay rate of structured quantum emitters into their environment opens new avenues for nonlinear quantum optics, collective phenomena, and quantum communications. Here we demonstrate a novel coupling scheme between an artificial molecule comprising two identical, strongly coupled transmon qubits, and two microwave waveguides. In our scheme, the coupling is engineered so that transitions between states of the same (opposite) symmetry, with respect to the permutation operator, are predominantly coupled to one (the other) waveguide. The symmetry-based coupling selectivity, as quanti…
We have engineered the bandgap profile of transmon qubits by combining oxygen-doped Al for tunnel junction electrodes and clean Al as quasiparticle traps to investigate energy relaxation due to quasiparticle tunneling. The relaxation time $T_1$ of the qubits is shown to be insensitive to this bandgap engineering. Operating at relatively low $E_J/E_C$ makes the transmon transition frequency distinctly dependent on the charge parity, allowing us to detect the quasiparticles tunneling across the qubit junction. Quasiparticle kinetics have been studied by monitoring the frequency switching due to …
As a genuine many-body entanglement, spin squeezing (SS) can be used to realize the highly precise measurement beyond the limit constrained by classical physics. Its generation has attracted much attention recently. It was reported that $N$ two-level systems (TLSs) located near a one-dimensional waveguide can generate a SS by using the mediation effect of the waveguide. However, a coherent driving on each TLS is used to stabilize the SS, which raises a high requirement for experiments. We here propose a scheme to generate stable SS resorting to neither the spin-spin coupling nor the coherent d…
Broadening the reflection band of atomic mirrors by engineering the emitter-waveguide coupling
National Center for Theoretical Sciences（国家理论科学中心）；Hon Hai Research Institute（鸿海研究院）；National Taiwan University（台湾大学）；Academia Sinica（中央研究院）；National Central University（中央大学）
The combination of established nanofabrication with attractive material properties makes silicon a promising material for quantum technologies, where implanted dopants serve as qubits with high density and excellent coherence even at elevated temperatures. In order to connect and control these qubits, interfacing them with light in nanophotonic waveguides offers unique promise. Here, we present resonant spectroscopy of implanted erbium dopants in such waveguides. We overcome the requirement of high doping and above-bandgap excitation that limited earlier studies. We thus observe erbium incorpo…
By performing a full analysis of the projected local density of states (LDOS) in a photonic crystal waveguide, we show that phase plays a crucial role in the symmetry of the light-matter interaction. By considering a quantum dot (QD) spin coupled to a photonic crystal waveguide (PCW) mode, we demonstrate that the light-matter interaction can be asymmetric, leading to unidirectional emission and a deterministic entangled photon source. Further we show that understanding the phase associated with both the LDOS and the QD spin is essential for a range of devices that that can be realised with a Q…
In the current quest for efficient and experimentally feasible platforms for implementation of multimode squeezing and entanglement in the continuous variable regime, we underpin and complement our results on the generation of versatile multimode entanglement and cluster states in nonlinear waveguide arrays presented by Barral et al., Phys. Rev. Appl. $\bf{14}$, 044025 (2020). We present detailed derivations of the equations that describe the propagation of light through this system, and then we focus on parameter regimes where these equations can be solved analytically. These analytical solut…
Quantum frequency conversion (QFC) in nonlinear optical media is a powerful tool for temporal-mode selective manipulation of light. Recent attempts at achieving high mode selectivities and/or fidelities have had to resort to multi-dimensional optimization schemes to determine the system's natural Schmidt modes. Certain combinations of relative-group velocities between the relevant frequency bands, medium length, and temporal pulse widths have been known to achieve good selectivities (exceeding 80%) for temporal modes that are nearly identical to pump pulse shapes, even for high conversion effi…
We theoretically study a system composed by a waveguide and a moving quantum emitter in the single excitation subspace, treating the emitter motional degree of freedom quantum mechanically. We first characterize single-photon scattering off a single moving quantum emitter, showing both nonreciprocal transmission and recoil-induced reduction of the quantum emitter motional energy. We then characterize the bound states within the bandgap, which display a motion-induced asymmetric phase in real space. We also demonstrate how these bound states form a continuous band with exotic dispersion relatio…
