Efficient single-photon frequency conversion in the microwave domain using superconducting quantum circuits

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method for highly efficient single-photon frequency conversion in the microwave domain using superconducting quantum circuits, enabling near-unity conversion efficiency through coherent control of artificial atoms.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum-mechanical approach for near-perfect single-photon frequency conversion in superconducting circuits, showing experimental feasibility with current technology.

Findings

Achieves near-unity efficiency in photon frequency conversion.

Analyzes single-photon scattering using a full quantum-mechanical method.

Demonstrates experimental feasibility with superconducting flux qubits.

Abstract

We present an approach to achieve efficient single-photon frequency conversion in the microwave domain based on coherent control in superconducting quantum circuits, which consist of a driven artificial atom coupled to a semi-infinite transmission line. Using the full quantum-mechanical method, we analyze the single-photon scattering process in this system and find that single-photon frequency up- or down-conversion with efficiency close to unity can be achieved by adjusting the parameters of the control field applied to the artificial atom. We further show that our approach is experimentally feasible in currently available superconducting flux qubit circuits.