Quantum control of an oscillator using stimulated nonlinearity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to directly control individual energy levels of a superconducting oscillator using stimulated nonlinearity, enabling the preparation of arbitrary states with potential for long-lived quantum modules.

Contribution

It introduces a flux-tunable inductive coupling and parametric flux modulation to selectively address and control oscillator eigenstates, advancing quantum control techniques.

Findings

Successfully prepared arbitrary states in the single photon manifold.

Achieved state control with coherence times limited by oscillator quality factor.

Enabled direct Rabi drive on individual energy levels of a superconducting oscillator.

Abstract

Superconducting circuits extensively rely on the Josephson junction as a nonlinear electronic element for manipulating quantum information and mediating photon interactions. Despite continuing efforts in designing anharmonic Josephson circuits with improved coherence times, the best photon lifetimes have been demonstrated in microwave cavities. Nevertheless, architectures based on quantum memories need a qubit element for addressing these harmonic modules at the cost of introducing additional loss channels and limiting process fidelities. This work focuses on tailoring the oscillator Hilbert space to enable a direct Rabi drive on individual energy levels. For this purpose we implement a flux-tunable inductive coupling between two linear resonators using a superconducting quantum interference device. We dynamically activate a three-wave mixing process through parametric flux modulation in order to selectively address the lowest eigenstates as an isolated two-level system. Measuring the Wigner function confirms we can prepare arbitrary states confined in the single photon manifold, with measured coherence times limited by the oscillator intrinsic quality factor. This architectural shift in engineering oscillators with stimulated nonlinearity can be exploited for designing long-lived quantum modules and offers flexibility in studying non-equilibrium physics with photons in a field-programmable simulator.