We analyze whether circuit-QED Hamiltonians are stoquastic focusing on systems of coupled flux qubits: we show that scalable sign-problem free path integral Monte Carlo simulations can typically be performed for such systems. Despite this, we corroborate the recent finding [arXiv:1903.06139] that an effective, non-stoquastic qubit Hamiltonian can emerge in a system of capacitively coupled flux qubits. We find that if the capacitive coupling is sufficiently small, this non-stoquasticity of the effective qubit Hamiltonian can be avoided if we perform a canonical transformation prior to projecting onto an effective qubit Hamiltonian. Our results shed light on the power of circuit-QED Hamiltonians for the use of quantum adiabatic computation and the subtlety of finding a representation which cures the sign problem in these systems
We study the cavity field's and atomic asymptotic mean excitation numbers due to anti-rotating term (AMENDART) in the circuit Quantum Electrodynamics (circuit QED) system, composed of a two-level atom and a single cavity field mode, subject to Markovian damping and dephasing mechanisms. We show that the AMENDART are above the thermal values, and their behavior is analyzed analytically and numerically for typical parameters in circuit QED implementations described by the Rabi Hamiltonian. We point out that "parasitic elements", such as other cavity modes or eventual off-resonant atoms, also con…
Using a circuit QED device, we present a theoretical study of real-time quantum state estimation via quantum Bayesian approach. Suitable conditions under which the Bayesian approach can accurately update the density matrix of the qubit are analyzed. We also consider the correlation between some basic and physically meaningful parameters of the circuit QED and the performance of the Bayesian approach. Our results advance the understanding of quantum Bayesian approach and pave the way to study quantum feedback control and adaptive control.
We study decoherence in a circuit QED system consisting of a charge qubit and two superconducting transmission line resonators (TLRs). We show that in the dispersive regime of the circuit QED system one TLR can be used as an auxiliary subsystem to realize decoherence-free quantum dynamics of the bipartite target system consisting of the charge qubit and the other TLR conditioned on the auxiliary TLR initially being a proper number state. Our study gives new insight into control and manipulation of decoherence in quantum systems.
We report the experimental observation, and a theoretical explanation, of collective suppression of linewidths for multiple superconducting qubits coupled to a good cavity. This demonstrates how strong qubit-cavity coupling can significantly modify the dephasing and dissipation processes that might be expected for individual qubits, and can potentially improve coherence times in many-body circuit QED.
We propose a scheme for detecting noncommutative feature of the non-Abelian geometric phase in circuit QED, which involves three transmon qubits capacitively coupled to an one-dimensional transmission line resonator. By controlling the external magnetic flux of the transmon qubits, we can obtain an effective tripod interaction of our circuit QED setup. The noncommutative feature of the non-Abelian geometric phase is manifested that for an initial state undergo two specific loops in different order will result in different final states. Our numerical calculations show that this difference can b…
Implementation of discrete-time quantum walk (DTQW) with superconducting qubits is difficult since on-chip superconducting qubits cannot hop between lattice sites. We propose an efficient protocol for the implementation of DTQW in circuit quantum electrodynamics (QED), in which only $N+1$ qutrits and $N$ assistant cavities are needed for an $N$-step DTQW. The operation of each DTQW step is very quick because only resonant processes are adopted. The numerical simulations show that high-similarity DTQW with the number of step up to $20$ is feasible with present-day circuit QED technique. This pr…
Transmission-line waveguides can mediate long-range fluctuation-induced forces between neutral objects. We present two approaches for the description of these forces between electric components embedded in transmission-line circuits. The first, following ordinary quantum electrodynamics (QED), consists of the quantization and scattering theory of voltage and current waves inside transmission lines. The second approach relies on a simple circuit analysis with additional noisy current sources due to resistors in the circuit, as per the fluctuation-dissipation theorem (FDT). We apply the latter a…
Based on a circuit QED qubit-cavity array a source of two-mode entangled microwave radiation is designed. Our scheme is rooted in the combination of external driving, collective phenomena and dissipation. On top of that the reflexion symmetry is broken via external driving permitting the appearance of chiral emission. Our findings go beyond the applications and are relevant for fundamental physics, since we show how to implement quantum lattice models exhibiting criticality driven by dissipation.
Circuit quantum electrodynamics ('circuit QED') describes the quantum mechanics and quantum field theory of superconducting electrical circuits operating in the microwave regime near absolute zero temperature. It is the analog of cavity QED in quantum optics with the role of the atoms being played by superconducting qubits. The present lecture notes focus primarily on novel quantum states that can be produced and measured using the strong coupling between an artificial atom and one or more cavities. Of particular importance are Schrodinger cat states of photons. Despite long being considered e…
We extend the non-Hermitian one-dimensional quantum walk model [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 065703 (2009)] by taking the dephasing effect into account. We prove that the feature of topological transition does not change even when dephasing between the sites within units is present. The potential experimental observation of our theoretical results in the circuit QED system consisting of superconducting qubit coupled to a superconducting resonator mode is discussed and numerically simulated. The results clearly show a topological transition in quantum walk and display the robustness of such a system t…
We propose a protocol to construct the 35 $f$-controlled phase gates of a three-qubit refined Deutsch-Jozsa (DJ) algorithm, by using single-qubit $σ_z$ gates, two-qubit controlled phase gates, and two-target-qubit controlled phase gates. Using this protocol, we discuss how to implement the three-qubit refined DJ algorithm with superconducting transmon qutrits resonantly coupled to a single cavity. Our numerical calculation shows that implementation of this quantum algorithm is feasible within the present circuit QED technique. The experimental realization of this algorithm would be an importan…
Quantum mechanical effects at the macroscopic level were first explored in Josephson junction-based superconducting circuits in the 1980's. In the last twenty years, the emergence of quantum information science has intensified research toward using these circuits as qubits in quantum information processors. The realization that superconducting qubits can be made to strongly and controllably interact with microwave photons, the quantized electromagnetic fields stored in superconducting circuits, led to the creation of the field of circuit quantum electrodynamics (QED), the topic of this review.…
We consider a circuit-QED setup that allows the induction and control of non-Markovian dynamics of a qubit. Non-Markovianity is enforced over the qubit by means of its direct coupling to a bosonic mode which is controllably coupled to other qubit-mode system. We show that this configuration can be achieved in a circuit-QED setup consisting of two initially independent superconducting circuits, each formed by one charge qubit and one transmission-line resonator, which are put in interaction by coupling the resonators to a current-biased Josephson junction. We solve this problem exactly and then…
We present a theoretical proposal for a physical implementation of entanglement concentration and purification protocols for two-mode squeezed microwave photons in circuit quantum electrodynamics (QED). First, we give the description of the cross-Kerr effect induced between two resonators in circuit QED. Then we use the cross-Kerr media to design the effective quantum nondemolition (QND) measurement on microwave-photon number. By using the QND measurement, the parties in quantum communication can accomplish the entanglement concentration and purification of nonlocal two-mode squeezed microwave…
We present an efficient method to generate a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) entangled state of three cat-state qubits (cqubits) via circuit QED. The GHZ state is prepared with three microwave cavities coupled to a superconducting transmon qutrit. Because the qutrit remains in the ground state during the operation, decoherence caused by the energy relaxation and dephasing of the qutrit is greatly suppressed. The GHZ state is created deterministically because no measurement is involved. Numerical simulations show that high-fidelity generation of a three-cqubit GHZ state is feasible with prese…
We theoretically propose a circuit QED system implemented with triple-leg stripline resonator (TSR). Unlikely from linear stripline resonator, the fundamental intra-cavity microwave modes of the TSR are two-fold degenerate. When a superconducting qubit is placed near one of the TSR legs, one fundamental mode is directly coupled to the qubit, while the other one remains uncoupled. Our system closely resembles an optical cavity QED system, where an atom in a cavity couples only to the incident photon with a specific polarization by placing a polarization beamsplitter in front of the optical cavi…
We explore applications of nonlinear circuit QED with a charge qubit inductively coupled to a microwave LC resonator in the photonic engineering and ultrastrong-coupling multiphoton quantum optics. Simply sweeping the gate-voltage bias achieves arbitrary Fock-state pulsed maser, where the single qubit plays the role of artificial gain medium. Resonantly pumping the parametric qubit-resonator interface leads to the squeezing of resonator field, which is utilizable to the quantum-limited microwave amplification. Moreover, upwards and downwards multiphoton quantum jumps may be observed in the ste…
In the solid-state circuit QED system and based on the homodyne measurement in dispersive regime, we demonstrate that a homodyne-current-based feedback can create and stabilize highly entangled two-qubit states in the presence of moderate noisy environment. Particularly, we present an extended analysis for the current-based Markovian feedback, which leads to an improved filtered-current-based feedback scheme. We show that this is essential for us to achieve the desirable control effect in present system.
Superconducting metamaterials, which are designed and fabricated with structured fundamental circuit elements, have motivated recent developments of exploring unconventional quantum phenomena in circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit-QED). We propose a method to engineer 1D Josephson metamaterial as a chiral waveguide by considering a programmed spatiotemporal modulation on its effective impedance. The modulation currents are in the form of traveling waves which phase velocities are much slower than the propagation speed of microwave photons. Due to the Brillouin-scattering process, non-triv…
One approach to quantum information processing is to use photons as quantum bits and rely on linear optical elements for most operations. However, some optical nonlinearity is necessary to enable universal quantum computing. Here, we suggest a circuit-QED approach to nonlinear optics quantum computing in the microwave regime, including a deterministic two-photon phase gate. Our specific example uses a hybrid quantum system comprising a LC resonator coupled to a superconducting flux qubit to implement a nonlinear coupling. Compared to the self-Kerr nonlinearity, we find that our approach has im…
We study theoretically the non-stationary circuit QED system in which the artificial atom transition frequency has a small periodic modulation in time, prescribed externally. We show that, in the dispersive regime, when the modulation periodicity meets the `resonances', the dynamics may be described by the dynamical Casimir effect, Jaynes-Cummings or Anti-Jaynes-Cummings effective Hamiltonians. In the resonant atom-cavity regime, under the modulation `resonance' the dynamics resembles the behavior of the dynamical Casimir effect in a vibrating cavity containing a resonant two-level atom, and e…
Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is a signature of quantum interference in an atomic three-level system. By driving the dressed cavity-qubit states of a two-dimensional circuit QED system, we generate a set of polariton states in the nesting regime. The lowest three energy levels are utilized to form the $Λ$-type system. EIT is observed and verified by Akaike's information criterion based testing. Negative group velocities up to $-0.52\pm0.09$ km/s are obtained based on the dispersion relation in the EIT transmission spectrum.
We consider the nonstationary circuit QED architecture, where a single artificial two-level atom interacts with a cavity field mode under external modulation of one or more system parameters. Two different approaches are employed to study the effects of Markovian dissipation on modulation-induced transitions between the atom-field dressed states: the standard master equation of Quantum Optics and the recently formulated dressed-picture master equation. We estimate the associated transition rates and show that photon generation from vacuum ("dynamical Casimir effect", DCE) and coherent photon a…
We consider continuous quantum measurement of a superconducting qubit in the circuit QED setup with a moderate bandwidth of the measurement resonator, i.e., when the "bad cavity" limit is not applicable. The goal is a simple description of the quantum evolution due to measurement, i.e., the measurement back-action. Extending the quantum Bayesian approach previously developed for the "bad cavity" regime, we show that the evolution equations remain the same, but now they should be applied to the entangled qubit-resonator state, instead of the qubit state alone. The derivation uses only elementar…
In this work we propose two protocols to make an effective gauge potential for microwave photons in circuit QED. The schemes consist of coupled transmons whose flux are harmonically modulated in time. We investigate the effect of various types of capacitive and inductive couplings, and the role of the fixed phase offset of each site on the complex coupling rate between coupled qubits. These configurations can be directly realised in a superconducting circuit and is easily extendable to a scalable lattice. Due to the intrinsic non-linearity of the transmon qubits such lattices would be an ideal…
One of the most direct preparations of a Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill qubit in an oscillator uses a tunable photon-pressure (also called optomechanical) coupling of the form $g \hat{q} a^{\dagger} a$, enabling to imprint the modular value of the position $\hat{q}$ of one oscillator onto the state of an ancilla oscillator. We analyze the practical feasibility of executing such modular quadrature measurements in a parametric circuit-QED realization of this coupling. We provide estimates for the expected GKP squeezing induced by the protocol and discuss the effect of photon loss and other errors on …
With the assistance of a single cyclic three-level system, which can be realized by a superconducting flux qubit, we study theoretically the degenerate microwave parametric down-conversion (PDC) in a superconducting transmission line resonator with the fundamental and second harmonic modes involved. By adiabatically eliminating the excited states of the three-level system, we obtain an effective microwave PDC Hamiltonian for the two resonator modes in such a circuit QED system. The corresponding PDC efficiency in our model can be much larger than that in the similar circuit QED system based on…
We propose a realistic scheme of generating a traveling odd Schr$ö$dinger cat state and a generalized entangled coherent state in circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit-QED). A squeezed vacuum state is used as initial resource of nonclassical states, which can be created through a Josephson traveling-wave parametric amplifier, and travels through a transmission line. Because a single-photon subtraction from the squeezed vacuum gives with very high fidelity an odd Schr$ö$dinger cat state, we consider a specific circuit-QED setup consisting of the Josephson amplifier creating the traveling res…
We study the effects of imperfections on the fidelity of the Toffoli gate recently realized in a circuit~QED setup using quantum control methods. The noise is introduced in the interqubits interactions. The coupling constants are no longer fixed; instead, they fluctuate around average values obeying some given probability density functions characterizing the dynamical-imperfection case. We also consider the static-imperfection case in which the values of the coupling constants are not exactly known. We obtain a more robust gate by modifying the quantum optimization problem using a weighted ave…
A strong photon-photon nonlinear interaction is a necessary condition for photon blockade. Moreover, this nonlinearity can also result a bistable behavior in the cavity field. We analyze the relation between detecting field and photon blockade in a superconducting circuit QED system, and show that photon blockade cannot occur when the detecting field is in the bistable regime. This photon blockade is the microwave-photonics analog of the Coulomb blockade. We further demonstrate that the photon transmission through such system can be controlled (from photon blockade to transparency) by the dete…
A scheme for coupling superconducting charge qubits via a one-dimensional superconducting transmission line resonator is proposed. The qubits are working at their optimal points, where they are immune to the charge noise and possess long decoherence time. Analysis on the dynamical time evolution of the interaction is presented, which is shown to be insensitive to the initial state of the resonator field. This scheme enables fast gate operation and is readily scalable to multiqubit scenario.
We propose a scheme to generate Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state for N superconducting qubits in a circuit QED system. By sinusoidally modulating the qubit-qubit coupling, a synthetic magnetic field has been made which broken the time-reversal symmetry of the system. Directional rotation of qubit excitation can be realized in a three-qubit loop under the artificial magnetic field. Based on the special quality that the rotation of qubit excitation has different direction for single- and double-excitation loops, we can generate three-qubit GHZ state and extend this preparation method to a…
We present and demonstrate a general three-step method for extracting the quantum efficiency of dispersive qubit readout in circuit QED. We use active depletion of post-measurement photons and optimal integration weight functions on two quadratures to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of the non-steady-state homodyne measurement. We derive analytically and demonstrate experimentally that the method robustly extracts the quantum efficiency for arbitrary readout conditions in the linear regime. We use the proven method to optimally bias a Josephson traveling-wave parametric amplifier and to qua…
In circuit QED, a Rabi model can be derived by truncating the Hilbert space of the anharmonic qubit coupled to a linear, reactive environment. This truncation breaks the gauge invariance present in the full Hamiltonian. We analyze the determination of an optimal gauge such that the differences between the truncated and the full Hamiltonian are minimized. Here, we derive a simple criterion for the optimal gauge. We find that it is determined by the ratio of the anharmonicity of the qubit to an averaged environmental frequency. We demonstrate that the usual choices of flux and charge gauge are n…
Circuit QED on a chip has become a powerful platform for simulating complex many-body physics. In this report, we realize a Dicke-Ising model with an antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbor spin-spin interaction in circuit QED with a superconducting qubit array. We show that this system exhibits a competition between the collective spin-photon interaction and the antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbor spin-spin interaction, and then predict four quantum phases, including: a paramagnetic normal phase, an antiferromagnetic normal phase, a paramagnetic superradiant phase, and an antiferromagnetic superrad…
We investigate the equilibrium behaviour of a superconducting circuit QED system containing a large number of artificial atoms. It is shown that the currently accepted standard description of circuit QED via an effective model fails in an important aspect: it predicts the possibility of a superradiant quantum phase transition, even though a full microscopic treatment reveals that a no-go theorem for such phase transitions known from cavity QED applies to circuit QED systems as well. We generalize the no-go theorem to the case of (artificial) atoms with many energy levels and thus make it more …
We theoretically study the transparency and amplification of a weak probe field applied to the cavity in hy- brid systems formed by a driven superconducting circuit QED system and a mechanical resonator, or a driven optomechanical system and a superconducting qubit. We find that both the mechanical resonator and the su- perconducting qubit can result in the transparency to a weak probe field in such hybrid systems when a strong driving field is applied to the cavity. We also find that the weak probe field can be amplified in some parameter regimes. We further study the statistical properties o…
We consider the nonlinear effects in Jahn-Teller system of two coupled resonators interacting simultaneously with flux qubit using Circuit QED. Two frequency description of Jahn Teller system that inherits the networked structure of both nonlinear Josephson Junctions and harmonic oscillators is employed to describe the synchronous structures in multifrequency scheme. Emergence of dominating mode is investigated to analyze frequency locking by eigenvalue spectrum. Rabi Supersplitting is tuned for coupled and uncoupled synchronous configurations in terms of frequency entrainment switched by coup…
A Reply to the Comment by C. Ciuti and P. Nataf [arXiv:1112.0986v1] on our Letter "Superradiant Phase Transitions and the Standard Description of Circuit QED" [Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 113602 (2011)].
Time-frequency entangled photons constitute an important resource for a plethora of applications across the diverse quantum technology landscape. Thus, efficient and tunable setups for the generation of entangled photons are requisite for modern quantum technologies. In this work, we propose a generic cavity QED setup designed for on-demand generation of time-frequency entangled photon pairs, with each photon propagating in a separate waveguide. We outline a potential incarnation of this setup in the microwave superconducting circuit QED architecture. We derive and numerically solve the set of…
Higher-order transitions can occur in the ultrastrong-coupling regime of circuit QED through virtual processes governed by the counter-rotating interactions. We propose a feasible way to probe higher-order transitions through the scattering of propagating microwave photons incident on the hybrid qubit-cavity system. The lineshapes in the scattering spectra can indicate the coherent interaction between the qubits and the cavity, and the higher-order transitions can be identified in the population spectra. We further find that if the coupling strengths between the two qubits and the cavity are t…
Compared with a qubit, a qutrit (i.e., three-level quantum system) has a larger Hilbert space and thus can be used to encode more information in quantum information processing and communication. Here, we propose a scheme to transfer an arbitrary quantum state between two flux qutrits coupled to two resonators. This scheme is simple because it only requires two basic operations. The state-transfer operation can be performed fast because of using resonant interactions only. Numerical simulations show that high-fidelity transfer of quantum states between the two qutrits is feasible with current c…
We investigate the Cherenkov radiation triggered by qubit acceleration simulated by superconducting circuit. By analyzing the radiation probability, we confirm the existence of Cherenkov speed threshold, implying that simulating superluminal qubit motion is possible for such a scenario. A question immediately arises: Is such motion compatible with the causality principle? To address the question, we perform a causality test on the simulating system based on the recently developed notion of temporal quantum correlations, pseudo-density matrix and temporal quantum steering. The results suggest t…
Developing efficient framework for quantum measurements is of essential importance to quantum science and technology. In this work, for the important superconducting circuit-QED setup, we present a rigorous and analytic solution for the effective quantum trajectory equation (QTE) after polaron transformation and converted to the form of Stratonovich calculus. We find that the solution is a generalization of the elegant quantum Bayesian approach developed in arXiv:1111.4016 by Korotokov and currently applied to circuit-QED measurements. The new result improves both the diagonal and offdiagonal …
We consider the feedback stabilization of Rabi oscillations in a superconducting qubit which is coupled to a microwave readout cavity. The signal is readout by homodyne detection of the in-phase quadrature amplitude of the weak measurement output. By multiplying the time-delayed Rabi reference, one can extract the signal, with maximum signal-to-noise ratio, from the noise. We further track and stabilize the Rabi oscillations by using Lyapunov feedback control to properly adjust the input Rabi drives. Theoretical and simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control law.
We introduce a circuit-QED architecture combining fixed-frequency qubits and microwave-driven couplers. In the appropriate frame, the drive parameters appear as tunable knobs enabling selective two-qubit coupling and coherent-error suppression. We moreover introduce a set of controlled-phase gates based on drive-amplitude and drive-frequency modulation. We develop a theoretical framework based on Floquet theory to model microwave-activated interactions with time-dependent drive parameters, which we also use for pulse shaping. We perform numerical simulations of the gate fidelity for realistic …
Hamiltonians of the superconducting qubits of Transmon type involve non-zero ZZ-interaction terms due to their finite and small anharmonicities. These terms might lead to the unwanted accumulation of spurious phases during the execution of the two-qubit gates. Exact calculation of the ZZ-interaction rates requires the full diagonalization of the circuit Hamiltonians which very quickly becomes computationally demanding as the number of the modes in the coupler circuit increases. Here we propose a direct analytical method for the accurate estimation of the ZZ-interaction rates between low-anharm…
Cavity and circuit QED study light-matter interaction at its most fundamental level. Yet, this interaction is most often neglected when considering the coupling of this system with an environment. In this paper, we show how this simplification, which leads to the standard quantum optics master equation, is at the root of unphysical effects. Including qubit relaxation and dephasing, and cavity relaxation, we derive a master equation that takes into account the qubit-resonator coupling. Special attention is given to the ultrastrong coupling regime, where the failure of the quantum optical master…
We study the realization of a Toffoli gate with superconducting qubits in a circuit-QED setup using quantum-control methods. Starting with optimized piecewise-constant control fields acting on all qubits and typical strengths of XY-type coupling between the qubits, we demonstrate that the optimal gate fidelities are affected only slightly by a "low-pass" filtering of these fields with the typical cutoff frequencies of microwave driving. Restricting ourselves to the range of control-field amplitudes for which the leakage to the non-computational states of a physical qubit is heavily suppressed,…
Designing high-precision and efficient schemes is of crucial importance for quantum parameter estimation in practice. The estimation scheme based on continuous quantum measurement is one possible type of this, which looks also the most natural choice in case such as continuous dynamical process. In this work we specify the study to the stat-of-the-art superconducting circuit quantum-electrodynamics (QED) system, where the high-quality continuous measurement has been extensively exploited in the past decade. Within the framework of Bayesian estimation and particularly using the quantum Bayesian…
A qudit ($d$-level quantum systems) has a large Hilbert space and thus can be used to achieve many quantum information and communication tasks. Here, we propose a method to transfer arbitrary $d$-dimensional quantum states (known or unknown) between two superconducting qudits coupled to a single cavity. The state transfer can be performed fast because of employing resonant interactions only. In addition, quantum states can be deterministically transferred without measurement. Numerical simulations show that high-fidelity transfer of quantum states between two superconducting transmon qudits ($…
Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) has been extensively studied in various systems. However, it is not easy to observe in superconducting quantum circuits (SQCs), because the Rabi frequency of the strong controlling field corresponding to EIT is limited by the decay rates of the SQCs. Here, we show that EIT can be achieved by engineering decay rates in a superconducting circuit QED system through a classical driving field on the qubit. Without such a driving field, the superconducting qubit and the cavity field are approximately decoupled in the large detuning regime, and thus the …
Superconducting circuits are well established as a strong candidate platform for the development of quantum computing. In order to advance to a practically useful level, architectures are needed which combine arrays of many qubits with selective qubit control and readout, without compromising on coherence. Here we present a coaxial circuit QED architecture in which qubit and resonator are fabricated on opposing sides of a single chip, and control and readout wiring are provided by coaxial wiring running perpendicular to the chip plane. We present characterisation measurements of a fabricated d…
