Quantum Dynamics of a Few-Photon Parametric Oscillator
Abstract
Modulating the frequency of a harmonic oscillator at nearly twice its natural frequency leads to amplification and self-oscillation. Above the oscillation threshold and in the presence of a nonlinearity, the field settles into a coherent oscillating state with a well-defined phase of either 0 or π. We demonstrate a quantum parametric oscillator operating at microwave frequencies and drive it into oscillating states containing only a few photons. The small number of photons present in the system and the coherent nature of the nonlinearity prevent the environment from learning the randomly chosen phase of the oscillator. This result allows the system to oscillate briefly in a quantum superposition of both phases at once, effectively generating a nonclassical Schrödinger’s cat state. We characterize the dynamics and states of the system by analyzing the output field emitted by the oscillator and implementing quantum state tomography suited for nonlinear resonators. By demonstrating a quantum parametric oscillator and the requisite techniques for characterizing its quantum state, we set the groundwork for new schemes of quantum and classical information processing and extend the reach of these ubiquitous devices deep into the quantum regime.
- Authors:
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Stanford Univ., CA (United States); Quantum Information Science (QIS)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1525341
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1574905
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0019174
- Resource Type:
- Published Article
- Journal Name:
- Physical Review. X
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Physical Review. X Journal Volume: 9 Journal Issue: 2; Journal ID: ISSN 2160-3308
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; Quantum Information Science (QIS)
Citation Formats
Wang, Zhaoyou, Pechal, Marek, Wollack, E. Alex, Arrangoiz-Arriola, Patricio, Gao, Maodong, Lee, Nathan R., and Safavi-Naeini, Amir H. Quantum Dynamics of a Few-Photon Parametric Oscillator. United States: N. p., 2019.
Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.9.021049.
Wang, Zhaoyou, Pechal, Marek, Wollack, E. Alex, Arrangoiz-Arriola, Patricio, Gao, Maodong, Lee, Nathan R., & Safavi-Naeini, Amir H. Quantum Dynamics of a Few-Photon Parametric Oscillator. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.9.021049
Wang, Zhaoyou, Pechal, Marek, Wollack, E. Alex, Arrangoiz-Arriola, Patricio, Gao, Maodong, Lee, Nathan R., and Safavi-Naeini, Amir H. Fri .
"Quantum Dynamics of a Few-Photon Parametric Oscillator". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.9.021049.
@article{osti_1525341,
title = {Quantum Dynamics of a Few-Photon Parametric Oscillator},
author = {Wang, Zhaoyou and Pechal, Marek and Wollack, E. Alex and Arrangoiz-Arriola, Patricio and Gao, Maodong and Lee, Nathan R. and Safavi-Naeini, Amir H.},
abstractNote = {Modulating the frequency of a harmonic oscillator at nearly twice its natural frequency leads to amplification and self-oscillation. Above the oscillation threshold and in the presence of a nonlinearity, the field settles into a coherent oscillating state with a well-defined phase of either 0 or π. We demonstrate a quantum parametric oscillator operating at microwave frequencies and drive it into oscillating states containing only a few photons. The small number of photons present in the system and the coherent nature of the nonlinearity prevent the environment from learning the randomly chosen phase of the oscillator. This result allows the system to oscillate briefly in a quantum superposition of both phases at once, effectively generating a nonclassical Schrödinger’s cat state. We characterize the dynamics and states of the system by analyzing the output field emitted by the oscillator and implementing quantum state tomography suited for nonlinear resonators. By demonstrating a quantum parametric oscillator and the requisite techniques for characterizing its quantum state, we set the groundwork for new schemes of quantum and classical information processing and extend the reach of these ubiquitous devices deep into the quantum regime.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevX.9.021049},
journal = {Physical Review. X},
number = 2,
volume = 9,
place = {United States},
year = {2019},
month = {6}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.9.021049
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.9.021049
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 4 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
Amplification and squeezing of quantum noise with a tunable Josephson metamaterial
journal, October 2008
- Castellanos-Beltran, M. A.; Irwin, K. D.; Hilton, G. C.
- Nature Physics, Vol. 4, Issue 12
Quantum State Reconstruction of the Single-Photon Fock State
journal, July 2001
- Lvovsky, A. I.; Hansen, H.; Aichele, T.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 87, Issue 5
Observation of quantum state collapse and revival due to the single-photon Kerr effect
journal, March 2013
- Kirchmair, Gerhard; Vlastakis, Brian; Leghtas, Zaki
- Nature, Vol. 495, Issue 7440
Optimized tomography of continuous variable systems using excitation counting
journal, November 2016
- Shen, Chao; Heeres, Reinier W.; Reinhold, Philip
- Physical Review A, Vol. 94, Issue 5
Painting Nonclassical States of Spin or Motion with Shaped Single Photons
journal, September 2018
- Davis, Emily J.; Wang, Zhaoyou; Safavi-Naeini, Amir H.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 121, Issue 12
Quantum Parametric Oscillator with Trapped Ions
journal, October 2017
- Ding, Shiqian; Maslennikov, Gleb; Hablützel, Roland
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 119, Issue 15
Observation of 4.2-K equilibrium-noise squeezing via a Josephson-parametric amplifier
journal, February 1988
- Yurke, B.; Kaminsky, P. G.; Miller, R. E.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 60, Issue 9
Confining the state of light to a quantum manifold by engineered two-photon loss
journal, February 2015
- Leghtas, Z.; Touzard, S.; Pop, I. M.
- Science, Vol. 347, Issue 6224
Experimental State Tomography of Itinerant Single Microwave Photons
journal, June 2011
- Eichler, C.; Bozyigit, D.; Lang, C.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 106, Issue 22
Direct Wigner Tomography of a Superconducting Anharmonic Oscillator
journal, March 2013
- Shalibo, Yoni; Resh, Roy; Fogel, Ofer
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 110, Issue 10
A near-quantum-limited Josephson traveling-wave parametric amplifier
journal, September 2015
- Macklin, C.; O'Brien, K.; Hover, D.
- Science, Vol. 350, Issue 6258
Tunable optical parametric oscillators
journal, January 1969
- Harris, S. E.
- Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 57, Issue 12
Engineering the quantum states of light in a Kerr-nonlinear resonator by two-photon driving
journal, April 2017
- Puri, Shruti; Boutin, Samuel; Blais, Alexandre
- npj Quantum Information, Vol. 3, Issue 1
Synthesizing arbitrary quantum states in a superconducting resonator
journal, May 2009
- Hofheinz, Max; Wang, H.; Ansmann, M.
- Nature, Vol. 459, Issue 7246
Deterministically Encoding Quantum Information Using 100-Photon Schrodinger Cat States
journal, September 2013
- Vlastakis, B.; Kirchmair, G.; Leghtas, Z.
- Science, Vol. 342, Issue 6158
Bifurcation-based adiabatic quantum computation with a nonlinear oscillator network
journal, February 2016
- Goto, Hayato
- Scientific Reports, Vol. 6, Issue 1
Squeezed states of light and their applications in laser interferometers
journal, April 2017
- Schnabel, Roman
- Physics Reports, Vol. 684
Deterministic protocol for mapping a qubit to coherent state superpositions in a cavity
journal, April 2013
- Leghtas, Zaki; Kirchmair, Gerhard; Vlastakis, Brian
- Physical Review A, Vol. 87, Issue 4
Dynamically protected cat-qubits: a new paradigm for universal quantum computation
journal, April 2014
- Mirrahimi, Mazyar; Leghtas, Zaki; Albert, Victor V.
- New Journal of Physics, Vol. 16, Issue 4
Colloquium : Quantum annealing and analog quantum computation
journal, September 2008
- Das, Arnab; Chakrabarti, Bikas K.
- Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 80, Issue 3
Offset masks for lift‐off photoprocessing
journal, September 1977
- Dolan, G. J.
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 31, Issue 5, p. 337-339
Characterization and reduction of capacitive loss induced by sub-micron Josephson junction fabrication in superconducting qubits
journal, July 2017
- Dunsworth, A.; Megrant, A.; Quintana, C.
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 111, Issue 2
A fully programmable 100-spin coherent Ising machine with all-to-all connections
journal, October 2016
- McMahon, Peter L.; Marandi, Alireza; Haribara, Yoshitaka
- Science, Vol. 354, Issue 6312
Quantum dynamics of the parametric oscillator
journal, June 1991
- Kinsler, P.; Drummond, P. D.
- Physical Review A, Vol. 43, Issue 11
Preparing quasienergy states on demand: A parametric oscillator
journal, May 2017
- Zhang, Yaxing; Dykman, M. I.
- Physical Review A, Vol. 95, Issue 5
Strong Coupling Cavity QED with Gate-Defined Double Quantum Dots Enabled by a High Impedance Resonator
journal, March 2017
- Stockklauser, A.; Scarlino, P.; Koski, J. V.
- Physical Review X, Vol. 7, Issue 1
Photon Generation in an Electromagnetic Cavity with a Time-Dependent Boundary
journal, December 2010
- Wilson, C. M.; Duty, T.; Sandberg, M.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 105, Issue 23
Parametric resonance in tunable superconducting cavities
journal, May 2013
- Wustmann, Waltraut; Shumeiko, Vitaly
- Physical Review B, Vol. 87, Issue 18
Schemes for the observation of photon correlation functions in circuit QED with linear detectors
journal, October 2010
- da Silva, Marcus P.; Bozyigit, Deniz; Wallraff, Andreas
- Physical Review A, Vol. 82, Issue 4
Reconstruction of non-classical cavity field states with snapshots of their decoherence
journal, September 2008
- Deléglise, Samuel; Dotsenko, Igor; Sayrin, Clément
- Nature, Vol. 455, Issue 7212
Quasi-phase-matched optical parametric oscillators in bulk periodically poled LiNbO_3
journal, January 1995
- Myers, L. E.; Eckardt, R. C.; Fejer, M. M.
- Journal of the Optical Society of America B, Vol. 12, Issue 11
Widely tunable parametric amplifier based on a superconducting quantum interference device array resonator
journal, August 2007
- Castellanos-Beltran, M. A.; Lehnert, K. W.
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 91, Issue 8
Method for Direct Measurement of the Wigner Function in Cavity QED and Ion Traps
journal, March 1997
- Lutterbach, L. G.; Davidovich, L.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 78, Issue 13
Single-shot read-out of a superconducting qubit using a Josephson parametric oscillator
journal, May 2016
- Krantz, Philip; Bengtsson, Andreas; Simoen, Michaël
- Nature Communications, Vol. 7, Issue 1
Coupling a Superconducting Quantum Circuit to a Phononic Crystal Defect Cavity
journal, July 2018
- Arrangoiz-Arriola, Patricio; Wollack, E. Alex; Pechal, Marek
- Physical Review X, Vol. 8, Issue 3
Works referencing / citing this record:
Quantum state preparation for coupled period tripling oscillators
journal, September 2019
- Lörch, Niels; Zhang, Yaxing; Bruder, Christoph
- Physical Review Research, Vol. 1, Issue 2
Repetition Cat Qubits for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation
journal, December 2019
- Guillaud, Jérémie; Mirrahimi, Mazyar
- Physical Review X, Vol. 9, Issue 4