We study different architectures for a photonic crystal in the microwave regime based on superconducting transmission lines interrupted by Josephson junctions, both in one and two dimensions. A study of the scattering properties of a single junction in the line shows that the junction behaves as a perfect mirror when the photon frequency matches the Josephson plasma frequency. We generalize our calculations to periodic arrangements of junctions, demonstrating that they can be used for tunable band engineering, forming what we call a quantum circuit crystal. Two applications are discussed in detail. In a two-dimensional structure we demonstrate the phenomenon of negative refraction. We finish by studying the creation of stationary entanglement between two superconducting qubits interacting through a disordered media.
We study different architectures for a photonic crystal in the microwave regime based on superconducting transmission lines interrupted by Josephson junctions, both in one and two dimensions. A study of the scattering properties of a single junction in the line shows that the junction behaves as a perfect mirror when the photon frequency matches the Josephson plasma frequency. We generalize our calculations to periodic arrangements of junctions, demonstrating that they can be used for tunable band engineering, forming what we call a quantum circuit crystal. Two applications are discussed in detail. In a two-dimensional structure we demonstrate the phenomenon of negative refraction. We finish by studying the creation of stationary entanglement between two superconducting qubits interacting through a disordered media.
We introduce an architecture for a photonic crystal in the microwave regime based on superconducting transmission lines interrupted by Josephson junctions. A study of the scattering properties of a single junction in the line shows that the junction behaves as a perfect mirror when the photon frequency matches the Josephson plasma frequency. We generalize our calculations to periodic arrangements of junctions, demonstrating that they can be used for tunable band engineering, forming what we call a quantum circuit crystal. As a relevant application, we discuss the creation of stationary entanglement between two superconducting qubits interacting through a disordered media.
One-dimensional Josephson waveguides have generated significant interest in the fields of quantum technology and superconducting quantum information because they allow complete control over wave dispersion and nonlinear interactions.A variety of Josephson waveguides have been proposed and realized in the recent years, with applications ranging from near quantum-limited broadband amplification to multi-mode entanglement generation and non-reciprocal signals transmission.This thesis explores parametric interactions and entanglement generation in a novel architecture of Josephson waveguide. The latter consists of a high-pass microwave network and realizes an artificial material showing left-handed wave dispersion (or equivalently negative refractive index). The left-handed dispersion, combined with the Josephson nonlinearity, enables for various parametric processes, ranging from self-phase-matched broadband amplification of co-propagating modes to amplification and mixing of waves propagating in opposite directions. The realization of such Josephson waveguide opens new avenues within the framework of Josephson traveling wave parametric amplifiers and converters.Beyond these classical nonlinear optical processes, negative index Josephson waveguide are also powerful tools to generate nonclassical states of light such as broadband two-mode vacuum squeezed states and spatially separated entangled photon pairs. Here, we report about the measurements of such quantum states with this novel Josephson waveguide architecture, opening new perspectives for quantum sensing and quantum radar and illumination protocols, and more generally for microwave applications requiring the routing of entangled photons in different directions.
Metamaterials are artificially designed materials to exhibit properties not available in natural materials by engineering the constituting elements at sub-wavelength scales, enabling unique interactions of matter with electromagnetic waves or coupling modes of electromagnetic waves. Examples of such novel optics phenomenons include negative index of refraction, cloaking, and super-resolution imaging. The study of superconducting metamaterials operating in the microwave frequency domain has recently generated significant interest in the framework of quantum technologies due to a wide range of direct applications, e.g., exploration of novel quantum optics phenomena, non-destructive quantum sensing, quantum-limited amplification, quantum information processing, and quantum illumination. In contrast to their normal metal and semiconducting counterparts, superconducting metamaterials offer some unique advantages. The most relevant of these for Josephson junction based metamaterials are low losses, flux quantization, and Josephson effects. The Josephson effect in a superconducting loop can also be exploited to exact more control over the nonlinearities of the meta-material.In this thesis, we present Josephson junction based metamaterials with in-situ tunability of second and third-order (Kerr) nonlinearities. We optimized the Josephson junction composites SNAILs, well-known in the superconducting circuits community, for the specific use case of building blocks for an impedance-matched nonlinear meta-material. In such devices, the strong third-order (Kerr) nonlinearity can be tuned from positive to negative values. To demonstrate the efficacy of this phenomenon, we have shown a use case of the meta-material as a TWPA with a new phase-matching mechanism: reversed Kerr phase matching, which utilizes the sign reversal of the Kerr nonlinearity to correct for the dispersion curvature of such devices arising due to its finite plasma. The meta-material operated as reversed Kerr TWPA exhibits up to 4 GHz wide combined amplification band with 8 GHz dynamic band tunability, -98 dBm saturation (1 dB compression point) around 20 dB gain, and amplifier added noise close to the standard quantum limit. The absence of any gaps in the transmission can provide a continuous amplification band with significantly lower gain ripples in contrast to the previously demonstrated TWPAs with dispersion engineering.We also present the generation of entanglement utilizing the metamaterials to demonstrate their versatility and further emphasize their potential in the general framework of nonlinear microwave quantum optics. Due to their large bandwidth, these devices have been identified as promising for generating two-mode squeezing and broadband entanglement. With a device optimized for the generation of broadband entanglement, we observed entanglement between two modes separated by up to 400 MHz. We measured logarithmic negativity between 0.27 and 0.51, and the collective quadrature squeezing below the vacuum limit between 1.5 and 2.1 dB. The presented proof-of-principle results can pave the way towards the implementation of Josephson junction based metamaterials in novel applications, including non-destructive single-photon detection, single-photon measurement and control in c-QED, photon-based quantum computing, precision sensing, the detection of dark matter, and quantum illumination.
As a typical nonlinear device, Josephson junction (JJ) can be either served as a microwave device to scatter the traveling microwave or embedded in a transmission line (TL) resonator to modify the mode structure. However, two mutually exclusive circuit models have been proposed to describe the JJ embedded in a TL: one is the series embed model [see, e.g., Zueco et al., Phys. Rev. B 86, 024503 (2012)] and another is the parallel embedded one [see, e.g., Yamamoto et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 93, 042510 (2008)]. Here, beginning with the comparison of the theoretical predictions of these two models, we fabricate the JJ-embedded TL device and measure its microwave scattering parameters at 50-mK low temperature. The experimental results support the parallel embedded model, thus rule out the series embedded one. The present work might lay the physical foundation for the designs of various microwave JJ devices, such as the microwave photonic crystals, superconducting qubits, also the Josephson parameter amplifiers, etc., by embedding the JJs into the superconducting TLs.
In the last decade, the field of Quantum Optics has been enriched with a completely new platform: superconducting quantum circuits, also known as circuit-QED. This platform builds on the original designs of superconducting qubits, that is few-level systems made of superconducting islands and Josephson junctions, but adds to it a new ingredient, microwave photons. In this talk I will review circuit-QED with a focus on two complementary lines of research: ultrastrong light-matter coupling and strongly correlated propagating photons. The first topic deals with novel designs of superconducting qubits, engineering their coupling to the microwave radiation field to reach Rabi frequencies that approach the qubit and photon frequencies. In this regime, known as ”ultrastrong coupling”, the rotating wave approximation from Quantum Optics is no longer valid, the vacuum may spontaneously polarize, producing photons that get bound to the qubit, and novel physics is expected to emerge. I will review recent experiments on this topic, together with various theoretical proposals to tame this ultrastrong coupling. The second topic revolves around the notion of ”propagating” photons in these circuits. Most experiments in circuit-QED so far adopted the typical configuration of artificial atoms (qubits) interacting with artificial cavities (LC resonators). This proved useful in order to reach the strong coupling regime, demonstrating Rabi oscillations and developing a variety of protocols for quantum information, tomograhy, entanglement, etc. However, recent experiments have shown that it is possible to also work with propagating photons, replacing the LC resonators with open transmission lines, and studying the scattering properties of those artificial atoms. In this context we have worked on developing new technology to detect and control these photons, engineering single-photon detectors, quantum metamaterials and photonic crystals, or even new nonlinear media based on coupled cavities.