The driven-damped Jaynes-Cummings model in the regime of strong coupling is found to exhibit a coexistence between the quantum photon blockaded state and a quasicoherent bright state. We characterize the slow time scales and the basin of attraction of these metastable states using full quantum simulations. This form of bistability can be useful for implementing a qubit readout scheme that does not require additional circuit elements. We propose a coherent control sequence that makes use of a simple linear chirp of drive amplitude and frequency as well as qubit frequency. By optimizing the parameters of the system and the control pulse, we demonstrate theoretically very high readout fidelities ($>$$98%$) and high contrast with experimentally realistic parameters for qubits implemented in the circuit QED architecture.
The driven-damped Jaynes-Cummings model in the regime of strong coupling is found to exhibit a coexistence between the quantum photon blockaded state and a quasicoherent bright state. We characterize the slow time scales and the basin of attraction of these metastable states using full quantum simulations. This form of bistability can be useful for implementing a qubit readout scheme that does not require additional circuit elements. We propose a coherent control sequence that makes use of a simple linear chirp of drive amplitude and frequency as well as qubit frequency. By optimizing the parameters of the system and the control pulse, we demonstrate theoretically very high readout fidelities (>$$98%) and high contrast with experimentally realistic parameters for qubits implemented in the circuit QED architecture.
We demonstrate a qubit readout scheme that exploits the Jaynes-Cummings nonlinearity of a superconducting cavity coupled to transmon qubits. We find that, in the strongly driven dispersive regime of this system, there is the unexpected onset of a high-transmission "bright" state at a critical power which depends sensitively on the initial qubit state. A simple and robust measurement protocol exploiting this effect achieves a single-shot fidelity of 87% using a conventional sample design and experimental setup, and at least 61% fidelity to joint correlations of three qubits.
In the strong coupling regime of cavity QED where the characteristic damping rates are orders of magnitude below the coherent coupling, resolved multi-photon resonances can be observed for strong enough driving strength. In a certain frequency range, the external coherent drive field hits multi-photon resonances which correspond to very high order transitions that cannot be excited at the given power of the driving field. We found that in this range the cavity field evolves into a robust semiclassical solution which is the mixture of the vacuum and an excited quasi-classical state. The system is reminiscent of optical bistability, however, here a single atom produces a telegraph signal for the outgoing intensity by switching between two states with large photon number difference. We calculate this behavior also for the Tavis-Cummings model representing three qubits in an existing circuit QED experimental setting.
Dispersive readout, the current standard for measuring superconducting qubits, relies on relatively easy to engineer, static transverse coupling between a qubit and a detuned cavity mode. However, this method requires circuit design trade-offs between qubit-cavity coupling, cavity-feedline coupling, detuning, and the resultant decoherence introduced by the cavity mode. Additionally, the criteria for performing quantum nondemolition measurements, including reduced cavity photon numbers, further limits speed and fidelity. In this work, we introduce a circuit with pulse-tunable qubit-cavity and cavity-feedline couplings so that the entire qubit-measurement process can be fully optimized. Here, the core measurement process resembles a quantum gate operation between the qubit and the cavity, with the cavity acting like an ancilla, storing the qubit-state information. To fully explore time-dependent effects of the full qubit-cavity dynamics, we go beyond the rotating-wave, Jaynes-Cummings, or dispersive approximations, to develop a pulsed-measurement protocol. In addition, we propose a realistic circuit architecture that can provide a very fast, high-fidelity, QND measurement with near-unit efficiency.
Abstract We propose a scheme to implement photon blockade in a non-Hermitian circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit-QED) system where a single-mode cavity interacts with a two-level emitter through virtual photon excitation mediated by a coupler resonator. A damping compensation regime is introduced by the phase-lag arising from the medium mode, thereby the periodic exceptional points (EPs) are observed at which the system achieves gain-damping balance. This regime enables photon blockade to occur within the single-mode cavity with high-damping rate by controlling the gain circuit of the coupler, which breaks the limitation of a low-damping rate for photon blockade under weak drive and relaxes the stringent requirements on the quality factor of the cavity. The numerical simulations for the second-order correlation function, obtained using reported experimental parameters, exhibit excellent agreement with our analytical results. The findings of this study provide a circuit-QED solution for single-quantum devices based on the high-damping cavities, which is of great significance for integrated quantum computing networks.
The speed and fidelity of dispersive readout of superconducting qubits should improve by increasing the amplitude of the measurement drive. Experiments show, however, that beyond some drive amplitude there is always a saturation or drop in fidelity, often associated with a decrease in qubit energy relaxation time T1. A simple Lindblad master equation does not capture the latter effect. More involved approaches based on effective master equations rely on strong assumptions about the spectra of the system and the bath and only partially agree with observations. Here, we perform a first-principles simulation of the full unitary dynamics of dispersive readout by considering the circuit QED Hamiltonian coupled to a microscopic model for the measurement transmission line, allowing for its arbitrary spectrum, including filters. Our access to the dynamics of the bath degrees of freedom allows us to investigate the emission spectrum of the system as a function of drive power. We show how the dependence of qubit T1 on readout drive amplitude is sensitive to the details of the bath spectrum. In particular, we find that T1 drops with increasing drive amplitude when a Purcell notch filter is placed at the qubit frequency, and that the Lindblad master equation shows general qualitative defects compared to the first-principles model.
The last decades have seen a burst of experimental platforms reaching the so-called strong-coupling regime, where quantum coherent effects dominate over incoherent processes such as dissipation and thermalization. This has allowed us to create highly nontrivial quantum states and put counterintuitive quantum-mechanical effects to test well beyond what the founding fathers of quantum mechanics ever thought possible. The strong-coupling regime comes with certain challenges though: The need for a large isolation makes it difficult to access the system for control or monitoring purposes. In this Letter we propose a way to access such systems through an engineered environment that does not compromise their strong-coupling effects. As a proof of principle, we apply the approach to the photon-blockade effect present in nonlinear resonators or Kerr cavities, optomechanical systems, and the open Jaynes-Cummings model, but argue that the mechanism is quite universal. We also propose an architecture based on superconducting circuits where the required unconventional environment can be implemented, opening the way to the experimental analysis of our ideas.