Quantum superposition of localized and delocalized phases of photons

TL;DR

This paper proposes a superconducting circuit-based method to coherently superpose localized and delocalized photon phases, enabling Rabi oscillations and offering scalable quantum computation advantages.

Contribution

It introduces a novel superconducting circuit setup that controls photon phases via a quantum knob, enabling superposition and Rabi oscillations between phases.

Findings

Demonstrates Rabi oscillation between photon phases

Proposes a scalable superconducting circuit design

Achieves infinite on/off ratio for photon localization

Abstract

Based on a variant of 2-site Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model, which is constructed using superconducting circuits, we propose a method to coherently superpose the localized and delocalized phases of photons. In our model, two nonlinear superconducting stripline resonators are coupled by an interfacial circuit composed of parallel combination of a superconducting qubit and a capacitor, which plays the role of a quantum knob for the photon hopping rate: with the knob qubit in its ground/excited state, the injected photons tend to be localized/delocalized in the resonators. We show that, by applying a microwave field with appropriate frequency on the knob qubit, we could demonstrate Rabi oscillation between photonic localized phase and delocalized phase. Furthermore, this set-up offers advantages (e. g. infinite on/off ratio) over other proposals for the realization of scalable quantum computation with superconducting qubits.