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arXiv:1310.6553 · Physical Review B

Single-photon transistor based on superconducting systems

Marco T. Manzoni, Florentin Reiter, Jacob M. Taylor, Anders Søndberg Sørensen

Published May 12, 2014• 25 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present a scheme for a single-photon transistor which can be implemented with only minor modifications of existing superconducting circuits. The proposal employs a three-level anharmonic ladder atom, e.g., a transmon qubit, placed in a cavity to mimic a $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-type atom with two long-lived states. This configuration may enable a wide range of effects originally studied in quantum optical systems to be realized in superconducting systems, and in particular allow for single-photon transistors. We study analytically and numerically the efficiency and the gain of the proposed transistor as a function of the experimental parameters, in particular of the level anharmonicity and of the various decay and decoherence rates. State-of-the-art values for these parameters indicate that error probabilities of $\ensuremath{\sim}1%$ and gains of the order of hundreds can be obtained.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.89.180502

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We present a scheme for a single-photon transistor which can be implemented with only minor modifications of existing superconducting circuits. The proposal employs a three-level anharmonic ladder atom, e.g., a transmon qubit, placed in a cavity to mimic a \ensuremathΛ\ensuremath{\Lambda}\ensuremathΛ-type atom with two long-lived states. This configuration may enable a wide range of effects originally studied in quantum optical systems to be realized in superconducting systems, and in particular allow for single-photon transistors. We study analytically and numerically the efficiency and the gain of the proposed transistor as a function of the experimental parameters, in particular of the level anharmonicity and of the various decay and decoherence rates. State-of-the-art values for these parameters indicate that error probabilities of \ensuremath∼1\ensuremath{\sim}1%\ensuremath∼1 and gains of the order of hundreds can be obtained.
We propose a microwave frequency single-photon transistor which can operate under continuous wave probing and represents an efficient single microwave photon detector. It can be realized using an impedance matched system of a three level artificial ladder-type atom coupled to two microwave cavities connected to input-output waveguides. Using a classical drive on the upper transition, we find parameter space where a single photon control pulse incident on one of the cavities can be fully absorbed into hybridized excited states. This subsequently leads to series of quantum jumps in the upper manifold and the appearance of a photon flux leaving the second cavity through a separate input-output port. The proposal does not require time variation of the probe signals, thus corresponding to a passive version of a single-photon transistor. The resulting device is robust to qubit dephasing processes, possesses low dark count rate for large anharmonicity, and can be readily implemented using current technology.
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We study a superconducting single-electron transistor (SSET) which is coupled to a LC\mathit{LC}LC oscillator via the phase difference across one of the Josephson junctions. This leads to a strongly anharmonic coupling between the SSET and the oscillator. The coupling can oscillate with the number of photons, which makes this system very similar to the single-atom injection maser. However, the advantage of a design based on superconducting circuits is the strong coupling and existence of standard methods to measure the radiation field in the oscillator. This makes it possible to study many effects that have been predicted for the single-atom injection maser in a circuit quantum electrodynamics setup.
Abstract This work concerns a three-qubit processor implemented as three transmon-type superconducting qubits capacitively coupled to a superconducting resonator driven by a microwave field. Based on an effective Hamiltonian of this system, we propose a scheme to realize an X -rotation gate for three qubits requiring only a single-step operation. During the gate operation, the cavity photon-number is canceled due to the strong microwave field. It does not require the cavity to be initially in the vacuum state and the scheme is insensitive to cavity decay. We also present an effective scheme to implement Grover’s search algorithm based on this quantum gate and a phase oracle. Using numerical simulation and analysis, we show that the proposed schemes allow for efficiently finding the target state with a high fidelity. The potential application of these proposals with current QED circuit technology is also discussed.