Driving quantum systems periodically in time plays an essential role in the coherent control of quantum states. The rotating wave approximation (RWA) is a good approximation technique for weak and nearly-resonance driven fields. However, these experiments sometimes require large detuning and strong driving fields, for which the RWA may not hold. In this work, we experimentally, numerically, and analytically explore strongly driven two-mode Josephson circuits in the regime of strong driving and large detuning. Specifically, we investigate beam-splitter and two-mode squeezing interaction between the two modes induced by driving a two-photon sideband transition. Using numerical simulations, we observe that the RWA is unable to correctly capture the amplitude of the sideband transition rates. We verify this finding using an analytical model that is based on perturbative corrections. We find that the breakdown of the RWA in the regime studied does not lead to qualitatively different dynamics, but gives the same results as the RWA theory at higher drive strengths, enhancing the coupling rates compared to what one would predict. This is an interesting consequence compared to the carrier transition case, where the breakdown of the RWA results in qualitatively different time evolution of the quantum state. Our work provides an insight into the behavior of time-periodically driven systems beyond the RWA. We also provide a robust theoretical framework for including these findings in the calculation and calibration of quantum protocols in circuit quantum electrodynamics.
Two-photon sideband transition in a driven quantum Rabi model : Quantitative discussions with derived longitudinal drives and beyond the rotating wave approximation
Light-matter interaction in optomechanical systems is the foundation for ultra-sensitive detection schemes [1,2] as well as the generation of phononic and photonic quantum states [3-10]. Electromechanical systems realize this optomechanical interaction in the microwave regime. In this context, capacitive coupling arrangements demonstrated interaction rates of up to 280 Hz [11]. Complementary, early proposals [12-15] and experiments [16,17] suggest that inductive coupling schemes are tunable and have the potential to reach the vacuum strong-coupling regime. Here, we follow the latter approach b…
We study how strong mechanical squeezing (beyond 3 dB) can be achieved through reservoir engineering in an optomechanical system which is far from the resolved-sideband regime. In our proposed setup, the effect of unwanted counter-rotating terms is suppressed by quantum interference from two auxiliary cavities. In the weak coupling regime we develop an analytical treatment based on the effective master equation approach, which allows us to obtain explicitly the condition of maximum squeezing.
We demonstrate rapid, first-order sideband transitions between a superconducting resonator and a frequency-modulated transmon qubit. The qubit contains a substantial asymmetry between its Josephson junctions leading to a linear portion of the energy band near the resonator frequency. The sideband transitions are driven with a magnetic flux signal of a few hundred MHz coupled to the qubit. This modulates the qubit splitting at a frequency near the detuning between the dressed qubit and resonator frequencies, leading to rates up to 85 MHz for exchanging quanta between the qubit and resonator.
Quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic vacuum impose an observable quantum limit to the lowest temperatures that can be reached with conventional laser cooling techniques. As laser cooling experiments continue to bring massive mechanical systems to unprecedented temperatures, this quantum limit takes on increasingly greater practical importance in the laboratory. Fortunately, vacuum fluctuations are not immutable, and can be "squeezed" through the generation of entangled photon pairs. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate that squeezed light can be used to sideband cool the motio…
In this work we show that a tunable coupling between microwave resonators can be engineered by means of simple Josephson junctions circuits, such as dc- and rf-SQUIDs. We show that by controlling the time dependence of the coupling it is possible to switch on and off and modulate the cross-talk, boost the interaction towards the ultrastrong regime, as well as to engineer red and blue sideband couplings, nonlinear photon hopping and classical gauge fields. We discuss how these dynamically tunable superconducting circuits enable key applications in the fields of all optical quantum computing, co…
We propose a scheme for simulating 3+1, 2+1, 1+1 Dirac equation for a free spin-1/2 particle with superconducting josephson circuits consisting of five qubits, four qubits, two qubits respectively. In 3+1D and 2+1D, the flux qubit1 driven by a resonant pulse is in the superposition state of its own two eigenstatesis, and it is used as a bus to induce the (blue)red-sideband excitation consisting of a magnetic pulse acting resonantly on two levels of the flux qubit2 and the energy levels of one phase qubit, which yields two (Anti)Jaynes-Cummings interactions with one driving pulse and reduces th…
We demonstrate fast two-qubit gates using a parity-violated superconducting qubit consisting of a capacitively-shunted asymmetric Josephson-junction loop under a finite magnetic flux bias. The second-order nonlinearity manifesting in the qubit enables the interaction with a neighboring single-junction transmon qubit via first-order inter-qubit sideband transitions with Rabi frequencies up to 30~MHz. Simultaneously, the unwanted static longitudinal~(ZZ) interaction is eliminated with ac Stark shifts induced by a continuous microwave drive near-resonant to the sideband transitions. The average f…
Slow light propagation is an important phenomenon in quantum optics. Here, we theoretically study the properties of slow light in a simple optomechanical system considering an effect of non-rotating wave approximation (NRWA) that was ignored in previous related works. With the NRWA effect, the ultraslow light can be easily achieved at the window of optomechanically induced transparency, especially in unresolved sideband regime. From the theoretical results, we find the upper bound of the time delay is exactly the mechanical ringdown time which can last for \textit{several minutes} (mHz linewid…
Standard optomechanical cooling methods ideally require weak coupling and cavity damping rates which enable the motional sidebands to be well resolved. If the coupling is too large then sideband-resolved cooling is unstable or the rotating wave approximation can become invalid. In this work we describe a protocol to cool a mechanical resonator coupled to a driven optical mode in an optomechanical cavity, which is also coupled to an optical mode in another auxiliary optical cavity, and both the cavities are frequency-modulated. We show that by modulating the amplitude of the drive as well, one …
We investigate the driven quantum phase transition between the oscillating motion and the classical nearly free rotations of the Josephson pendulum coupled to a harmonic oscillator in the presence of dissipation. We refer to this as the Josephson-Rabi model. This model describes the standard setup of circuit quantum electrodynamics, where typically a transmon device is embedded in a superconducting cavity. We find that by treating the system quantum mechanically this transition occurs at higher drive powers than expected from an all-classical treatment, which is a consequence of the quasiperio…
We present the exact analytical solution of the explicitly time-periodic quantum Langevin equation describing the dual-beam backaction-evasion measurement of a single mechanical oscillator quadrature due to Braginsky, Vorontsov and Thorne beyond the commonly used rotating-wave approximation. We show that counterrotating terms lead to extra sidebands in the optical and mechanical spectra and to a modification of the main peak. Physically, the backaction of the measurement is due to periodic coupling of the mechanical resonator to a light field quadrature that only contains cavity-filtered shot …
We consider a simple model of a Josephson junction phase qubit coupled to a solid-state nanoelectromechanical resonator. This and many related qubit-resonator models are analogous to an atom in an electromagnetic cavity. When the systems are weakly coupled and nearly resonant, the dynamics is accurately described by the rotating-wave approximation (RWA) or the Jaynes-Cummings model of quantum optics. However, the desire to develop faster quantum-information-processing protocols necessitates approximate, yet analytic descriptions that are valid for more strongly coupled qubit-resonator systems.…
We demonstrate the preparation and coherent control of the angular momentum state of a two-ion crystal. The ions are prepared with an average angular momentum of $7780\hbar$ freely rotating at 100~kHz in a circularly symmetric potential, allowing us to address rotational sidebands. By coherently exciting these motional sidebands, we create superpositions of states separated by up to four angular momentum quanta. Ramsey experiments show the expected dephasing of the superposition which is dependent on the number of quanta separating the states. These results demonstrate coherent control of a co…
Photon-pressure coupling between two superconducting circuits is a promising platform for investigating radiation-pressure coupling in novel parameter regimes and for the development of radio-frequency (RF) quantum photonics and quantum-limited RF sensing. So far, the intrinsic Josephson nonlinearity of photon-pressure coupled circuits has not been considered a potential resource for enhanced devices or novel experimental schemes. Here, we implement photon-pressure coupling between a RF circuit and a microwave cavity containing a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) which can be…
A Josephson junction embedded in a dissipative circuit can be externally driven to induce nonlinear dynamics of its phase. Classically, under sufficiently strong driving and weak damping, dynamic multi-stability emerges associated with dynamical bifurcations so that the often used modeling as a Duffing oscillator, which can exhibit bi-stability at the most, is insufficient. The present work analyzes in this regime corresponding quantum properties by mapping the problem onto a highly-nonlinear quasi-energy operator in a rotating frame. This allows us to identify in detail parameter regions wher…
We define the anisotropic Rabi model as the generalization of the spin-boson Rabi model: The Hamiltonian system breaks the parity symmetry; the rotating and counter-rotating interactions are governed by two different coupling constants; a further parameter introduces a phase factor in the counter-rotating terms. The exact energy spectrum and eigenstates of the generalized model is worked out. The solution is obtained as an elaboration of a recent proposed method for the isotropic limit of the model. In this way, we provide a long sought solution of a cascade of models with immediate relevance …
Nonclassical optomechanical correlations enable optical control of mechanical motion beyond the limitations of classical driving. Here we investigate the feasibility of using pulsed cavity-optomechanics to create and verify nonclassical phase-sensitive correlations between light and the motion of a levitated nanoparticle in a realistic scenario. We show that optomechanical two-mode squeezing can persist even at the elevated temperatures of state-of-the-art experimental setups. We introduce a detection scheme based on optical homodyning that allows revealing nonclassical correlations without fu…
We propose an approach to generate strong quantum entanglement by the controllable four wave mixing mechanism in a single cavity, weak coupling optomechanical system. The optomechanical system is driven by a strong two tone pump field and a weak signal field, simultaneously. The two tone pump field consists of a lower and an upper sideband, which couple with the optical cavity and mechanical resonator, and generate the beam splitter and two mode squeezing interactions under the rotating wave approximation. This interaction mechanism modifies the effective susceptibility of the optomechanical c…
By means of a two-mode model, we show that transitions to different arrays of coexistent regimes in the phase space can be attained by rotating a double-well system, which consists of a toroidal condensate with two diametrically placed barriers. Such a configuration corresponds to the atomtronic counterpart of the well-known direct-current superconducting quantum interference device. Due to the phase gradient experimented by the on-site localized functions when the system is subject to rotation, a phase difference appears on each junction in order to satisfy the quantization of the velocity fi…
The ultrastrongly coupling (USC) system has very important research significance in quantum simulation and quantum computing. In this paper, the ultranarrow spectrum of a circuit QED system with two qubits ultrastrongly coupled to a single-mode cavity is studied. In the regime of USC, the JC model breaks down and the counter-rotating terms in the quantum Rabi Hamiltonian leads to the level anti-crossing in the energy spectrum. Choosing a single-photon driving field at the point of avoided-level crossing, we can get an equivalent four-level dressed state model, in which the dissipation of the t…
Many techniques in quantum control rely on frequency separation as a means for suppressing unwanted couplings. In its simplest form, the mechanism relies on the low bandwidth of control pulses of long duration. Here we perform a higher-order quantum-mechanical treatment that allows for higher precision and shorter times. In particular, we identify three kinds of off-resonant effects: i) simultaneous unwanted driven couplings (e.g. due to drive crosstalk), ii) additional (initially undriven) transitions such as those in an infinite ladder system, and iii) sideband frequencies of the driving wav…
Superconducting circuits with Josephson junctions are promising candidates for developing future quantum technologies. Of particular interest is to use these circuits to study effects that typically occur in complex condensed-matter systems. Here, we employ a superconducting quantum bit (qubit),a transmon, to carry out an analog simulation of motional averaging, a phenomenon initially observed in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. To realize this effect, the flux bias of the transmon is modulated by a controllable pseudo-random telegraph noise, resulting in stochastic jumping of th…
A two-level atom interacting with a single radiation mode is considered, without the rotating-wave approximation, in the strong coupling regime. It is shown that, in agreement with the recent results on Rabi oscillations in a Josephson junction (Y. Nakamura, Yu. A. Pashkin and J. S. Tsai, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 87}, 246601 (2001)), the Rabi frequency is indeed proportional to first kind integer order Bessel functions in the limit of a large number of photons and the dressed states are macroscopic quantum superposition states. To approach this problem analytically use is made of the dual Dyson s…
We report on the two-dimensional (2D) dynamics of a levitated nanoparticle in an optical cavity. The motion of the nanosphere is strongly coupled to the cavity field by coherent scattering and heavily cooled in the plane orthogonal to the tweezer axis. Due to the characteristics of the 2D motion and the strong optomechanical coupling, the motional sideband asymmetry that reveals the quantum nature of the dynamics is not limited to mere scale factors between Stokes and anti-Stokes peaks, as customary in quantum optomechanics, but assumes a peculiar spectral dependence. We introduce and discuss …
Going beyond the entanglement of microscopic objects (such as photons, spins, and ions), here we propose an efficient approach to produce and control the quantum entanglement of three macroscopic coupled superconducting qubits. By conditionally rotating, one by one, selected Josephson charge qubits, we show that their Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) entangled states can be deterministically generated. The existence of GHZ correlations between these qubits could be experimentally demonstrated by effective single-qubit operations followed by high-fidelity single-shot readouts. The possibility …
We show that the classical model of Euler top (freely rotating, generally asymmetric rigid body), possibly supplemented with a rotor, corresponds to a generalized Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick (LMG) model describing phenomena of various branches of quantum physics. Classical effects such as free precession of a symmetric top, Feynman's wobbling plate, tennis-racket instability and the Dzhanibekov effect, attitude control of satellites by momentum wheels, or twisting somersault dynamics, have their counterparts in quantum effects that include spin squeezing by one-axis twisting and two-axis countertwist…
We study a multimode optomechanical system where two mechanical oscillators are coupled to an electromagnetic cavity. Previously it has been shown that if the mechanical resonances have nearly equal frequencies, one can make the oscillators to interact via the cavity by strong pumping with a coherent pump tone. One can view the interaction also as emergence of an electromagnetically dark mode which gets asymptotically decoupled from the cavity and has a linewidth much smaller than that of the bare cavity. The narrow linewidth and long lifetime of the dark mode could be advantageous for example…
By coupling pairs of superconducting qubits through a small Josephson junction with a time-dependent flux bias, we show that arbitrary interactions involving any combination of Pauli matrices can be generated with a small number of drive tones applied through the flux bias of the coupling junction. We then demonstrate that similar (though not fully universal) results can be achieved in capacitively coupled qubits by exploiting the higher energy states of the devices through multi-photon drive signals applied to the qubits' flux degrees of freedom. By using this mechanism to couple a qubit to a…
