Observation of Floquet states in a strongly driven artificial atom

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the observation of Floquet states in a strongly driven superconducting artificial atom, showing how pulse shaping influences dynamics and enabling fast quantum control for quantum technology applications.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence of Floquet states in a strongly driven artificial atom and explores pulse shaping effects on non-adiabatic transitions.

Findings

Floquet states observed in a superconducting qubit under strong drive

Pulse shaping affects non-adiabatic transitions between Floquet states

Achieved subnanosecond single-qubit operations

Abstract

We present experiments on the driven dynamics of a two-level superconducting artificial atom. The driving strength reaches 4.78 GHz, significantly exceeding the transition frequency of 2.288 GHz. The observed dynamics is described in terms of quasienergies and quasienergy states, in agreement with Floquet theory. In addition, we observe the role of pulse shaping in the dynamics, as determined by non-adiabatic transitions between Floquet states, and we implement subnanosecond single-qubit operations. These results pave the way to quantum control using strong driving with applications in quantum technologies.