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arXiv:1809.06163 · Physical Review A

Mixing of coherent waves in a single three-level artificial atom

T. Hönigl-Decrinis, Ilya Antonov, Rais S. Shaikhaidarov, Vladimir N Antonov, A. Yu. Dmitriev, O. V. Astafiev

Published Oct 9, 2018• 22 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We report coherent frequency conversion in the gigahertz range via three-wave mixing in a single artificial atom in open space. All frequencies involved are in the vicinity of transition frequencies of the three-level atom. A cyclic configuration of levels is therefore essential, which we have realized with an artificial atom based on the flux qubit geometry. The atom is continuously driven at two transition frequencies and we directly measure the coherent emission at the sum or difference frequency. Our approach enables coherent conversion of the incoming fields into the coherent emission at a designed frequency in prospective devices of quantum electronics.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.98.041801

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We report coherent frequency conversion in the gigahertz range via three-wave mixing in a single artificial atom in open space. All frequencies involved are in the vicinity of transition frequencies of the three-level atom. A cyclic configuration of levels is therefore essential, which we have realized with an artificial atom based on the flux qubit geometry. The atom is continuously driven at two transition frequencies and we directly measure the coherent emission at the sum or difference frequency. Our approach enables coherent conversion of the incoming fields into the coherent emission at a designed frequency in prospective devices of quantum electronics.
By strongly driving a cyclic-transition three-level artificial atom, demonstrated by such as a flux-based superconducting circuit, we show that coherent microwave signals can be excited along a coupled one-dimensional transmission line. Typically, the intensity of the generated microwave is tunable via properly adjusting the Rabi frequencies of the applied strong-driving fields or introducing a probe field with the same frequency. In practice, the system proposed here could work as an on-chip quantum device with controllable atom-photon interaction to implement a total-reflecting mirror or switch for the propagating probe field.
Using a strong driving classical field, we propose experimental schemes for realizing frequency up-and down-conversion in a two-mode cavity by an artificial atom with cyclic population transfer. Our scheme is based on resonant interaction of the cavity modes with a single driven three-level artificial atom, so that the quantum dynamic operation is at a high speed, which is important in view of decoherence. It is shown that frequency up- and down-conversion operations can be realized by initially preparing the artificial atom in a certain state. As an application, we show how to generate a two-mode squeezed state from any initially field state in the cavity.
We present a theoretical study of multiwave mixing in a driven superconducting quantum qubit (artificial atom) with a cyclic Ξ-type three-level structure. We first show that three-wave mixing (3WM), four-wave mixing (4WM), and five-wave mixing (5WM) processes can coexist in the microwave regime in such an artificial system due to the absence of selection rules. Because of electromagnetically induced transparency suppression of linear absorption in a standard Ξ-type configuration, the generated 4WM is enhanced greatly and its efficiency can be as high as 0.1% for only a single artificial atom. We also show that Autler-Townes splitting occurs in the 3WM and 5WM spectra and quantum interference has a significant impact on the total signal intensity being a coherent superposition of these two signals.
We present an approach to achieve efficient single-photon frequency conversion in the microwave domain based on coherent control in superconducting quantum circuits, which consist of a driven artificial atom coupled to a semi-infinite transmission line. Using the full quantum-mechanical method, we analyze the single-photon scattering process in this system and find that single-photon frequency up- or down-conversion with efficiency close to unity can be achieved by adjusting the parameters of the control field applied to the artificial atom. We further show that our approach is experimentally feasible in currently available superconducting flux qubit circuits.
Three-wave mixing in second-order nonlinear optical processes cannot occur in atomic systems due to the electric-dipole selection rules. In contrast, we demonstrate that second-order nonlinear processes can occur in a superconducting quantum circuit (i.e., a superconducting artificial atom) when the inversion symmetry of the potential energy is broken by simply changing the applied magnetic flux. In particular, we show that difference- and sum-frequencies (and second harmonics) can be generated in the microwave regime in a controllable manner by using a single three-level superconducting flux quantum circuit (SFQC). For our proposed parameters, the frequency tunability of this circuit can be achieved in the range of about 17 GHz for the sum-frequency generation, and around 42 GHz (or 26 GHz) for the difference-frequency generation. Our proposal provides a simple method to generate second-order nonlinear processes within current experimental parameters of SFQCs.
We investigate the power spectral density emitted by a superconducting artificial atom coupled to the end of a semi-infinite transmission line and driven by two continuous radio frequency fields. In this setup, we observe the generation of multiple frequency peaks and the formation of frequency combs with equal detuning between those peaks. The frequency peaks originate from wave mixing of the drive fields, mediated by the artificial atom, highlighting the potential of this system as both a frequency converter and a frequency-comb generator. We demonstrate precise control and tunability in generating these frequency features, aligning well with theoretical predictions, across a relatively wide frequency range (tens of MHz, exceeding the linewidth of the artificial atom). The extensive and simple tunability of this frequency converter and comb generator, combined with its small physical footprint, makes it promising for quantum optics on chips and other applications in quantum technology.