We propose a one-step scheme to implement a multiqubit controlled phase gate with one qubit simultaneously controlling multiple qubits with three-level atoms at distant nodes in coupled cavity arrays. Selective qubit-qubit couplings are achieved by adiabatically eliminating the atomic excited states and photonic states, and the required phase shifts between the control qubit and any target qubit can be realized through suitable choices of the parameters of the external fields. Moreover, the effective model is robust against decoherence because neither the atoms nor the field modes are excited during the gate operation, leading to a useful step toward scalable quantum computing networks.
In recent years, quantum state engineering and quantum information processing using microwave fields and photons have received increasing attention. In addition, multiqubit gates play an important role in quantum information processing. In this work, we propose to encode a photonic qubit via two arbitrary orthogonal eigenstates (with eigenvalues $\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}1$, respectively) of the photon-number parity operator. With such encoding, we then present a single-step method to realize a multi-target-qubit controlled-phase gate with one photonic qubit simultaneously controlling $n\ensuremath{-}1$ target photonic qubits, by employing
n microwave cavities coupled to one superconducting flux qutrit. This proposal can be applied not only to implement nonhybrid multi-target-qubit controlled-phase gates using photonic qubits with various encodings, but also to realize hybrid multi-target-qubit controlled-phase gates using photonic qubits with different encodings. The gate realization requires only a single-step operation. The gate operation time does not increase with the number of target qubits. Because the qutrit remains in the ground state during the entire operation, decoherence from the qutrit is greatly suppressed. As an application, we show how to apply this gate to generate a multicavity Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) entangled state with general expression. Depending on the specific encodings, we further discuss the preparation of several nonhybrid and hybrid GHZ entangled states of multiple cavities. We numerically investigate the circuit-QED experimental feasibility of creating a three-cavity spin-coherent hybrid GHZ state. This proposal can be extended to accomplish the same tasks in a wide range of physical systems, such as multiple microwave or optical cavities coupled to a three-level natural or artificial atom.