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arXiv:2006.12725 · Physical Review Research

Overcoming decoherence of Schrödinger cat states formed in a cavity using squeezed-state inputs

Run Yan Teh, P. D. Drummond, M. D. Reid

Published Dec 17, 2020• 34 citations
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Abstract

A cat-state is a superposition of two coherent states with amplitudes $α_{0}$ and $-α_{0}$. Recent experiments create cat states in a microwave cavity field using superconducting circuits. As with degenerate parametric oscillation (DPO) in an adiabatic and highly nonlinear limit, the states are formed in a signal cavity mode via a two-photon dissipative process induced by the down conversion of a pump field to generate pairs of signal photons. The damping of the signal and the presence of thermal fluctuations rapidly decoheres the state, and the effect on the dynamics is to either destroy the possibility of a cat state, or else to sharply reduce the lifetime and size of the cat-states that can be formed. In this paper, we study the effect on both the DPO and microwave systems of a squeezed reservoir coupled to the cavity. While the threshold nonlinearity is not altered, we show that the use of squeezed states significantly lengthens the lifetime of the cat states. This improves the feasibility of generating cat states of large amplitude and with a greater degree of quantum macroscopic coherence, which is necessary for many quantum technology applications. Using current experimental parameters for the microwave set-up, which requires a modified Hamiltonian, we further demonstrate how squeezed states enhance the quality of the cat states that could be formed in this regime. Squeezing also combats the significant decoherence due to thermal noise, which is relevant for microwave fields at finite temperature. By modeling a thermal squeezed reservoir, we show that the thermal decoherence of the dynamical cat states can be inhibited by a careful control of the squeezing of the reservoir. To signify the quality of the cat state, we consider different signatures including fringes and negativity, and the $C_{l_{1}}$ measure of quantum coherence.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.2.043387

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A cat-state is a superposition of two coherent states with amplitudes α0α_{0}α0​ and −α0-α_{0}−α0​. Recent experiments create cat states in a microwave cavity field using superconducting circuits. As with degenerate parametric oscillation (DPO) in an adiabatic and highly nonlinear limit, the states are formed in a signal cavity mode via a two-photon dissipative process induced by the down conversion of a pump field to generate pairs of signal photons. The damping of the signal and the presence of thermal fluctuations rapidly decoheres the state, and the effect on the dynamics is to either destroy the possibility of a cat state, or else to sharply reduce the lifetime and size of the cat-states that can be formed. In this paper, we study the effect on both the DPO and microwave systems of a squeezed reservoir coupled to the cavity. While the threshold nonlinearity is not altered, we show that the use of squeezed states significantly lengthens the lifetime of the cat states. This improves the feasibility of generating cat states of large amplitude and with a greater degree of quantum macroscopic coherence, which is necessary for many quantum technology applications. Using current experimental parameters for the microwave set-up, which requires a modified Hamiltonian, we further demonstrate how squeezed states enhance the quality of the cat states that could be formed in this regime. Squeezing also combats the significant decoherence due to thermal noise, which is relevant for microwave fields at finite temperature. By modeling a thermal squeezed reservoir, we show that the thermal decoherence of the dynamical cat states can be inhibited by a careful control of the squeezing of the reservoir. To signify the quality of the cat state, we consider different signatures including fringes and negativity, and the Cl1C_{l_{1}}Cl1​​ measure of quantum coherence.
A cat state is formed as the steady-state solution for the signal mode of an ideal degenerate parametric oscillator, in the limit of negligible single-photon signal loss. In the presence of signal loss, this is no longer true over timescales much longer than the damping time. However, for sufficient parametric nonlinearity, a cat state can still exist as a transient state. In this paper we study the dynamics of the creation and decoherence of cat states in degenerate parametric oscillation, both with and without the Kerr nonlinearity found in recent superconducting-circuit experiments that generate cat states in microwave cavities. We determine the time of formation and the lifetime of a cat state of fixed amplitude in terms of three dimensionless parameters $\ensuremath{\lambda}$, ggg, and $\ensuremath{\chi}$. These relate to the driving strength, the parametric nonlinearity relative to signal damping, and the Kerr nonlinearity, respectively. We find that the Kerr nonlinearity has little effect on the threshold parametric nonlinearity (g>1g>1g>1) required for the formation of cat states and does not significantly alter the decoherence time of the cat state, but can reduce the time of formation. The quality of the cat state increases with the value of ggg. To verify the existence of the cat state, we consider several signatures, including interference fringes and negativity. We emphasize the importance of taking into account more than one of these signatures. We simulate a superconducting-circuit experiment using published experimental parameters and find good agreement with experimental results, indicating that a nonclassical catlike state with a small Wigner negativity is generated in the experiment. Interference fringes, however, are absent, requiring higher ggg values. Finally, we explore the feasibility of creating large cat states with a coherent amplitude of 20, corresponding to 400 photons, and study finite-temperature reservoir effects.
We present an efficient approach for dissipative generation of quantum superposition states in the microwave resonator, which is coupled to a superconducting qubit. We investigate the situation where the inversion symmetry of potential energy of the qubit is broken, and the strong two-photon nonlinear coupling between qubit and resonator can be realized via the transverse and longitudinal couplings. According to the two-photon dissipation and driving process, the dissipation of a qubit can be utilized to steer the microwave field into a quantum superposition of distinct coherent states, i.e., the Schr\"odinger cat state. In addition, we also extend the method to produce an entangled coherent state of two spatially separated resonators. Our scheme is based on quantum reservoir engineering and turns detrimental noise into a resource, which makes it feasible in experimental implementation. The present result may have potential applications in the field of quantum information processing with circuit QED systems.
By applying a microwave drive to a specially designed Josephson circuit, we have realized an elementary quantum optics model, the squeezed Kerr oscillator. This model displays, as the squeezing amplitude is increased, a cross-over from a single ground state regime to a doubly-degenerate ground state regime. In the latter case, the ground state manifold is spanned by Schrödinger-cat states, i.e. quantum superpositions of coherent states with opposite phases. For the first time, having resolved up to the tenth excited state in a spectroscopic experiment, we confirm that the proposed emergent static effective Hamiltonian correctly describes the system, despite its driven character. We also find that the lifetime of the coherent state components of the cat states increases in steps as a function of the squeezing amplitude. We interpret the staircase pattern as resulting from pairwise level kissing in the excited state spectrum. Considering the Kerr-cat qubit encoded in this ground state manifold, we achieve for the first time quantum nondemolition readout fidelities greater than 99%, and enhancement of the phase-flip lifetime by more than two orders of magnitude, while retaining universal quantum control. Our experiment illustrates the crucial role of parametric drive Hamiltonian engineering for hardware-efficient quantum computation.
A degenerate optical parametric oscillator (DOPO) in the above threshold regime is a prominent source of squeezed field. In this study, a driven DOPO whose pump mode is coupled to a thermal bath while the signal mode is coupled to a squeezed vacuum reservoir is explored to understand the effect of the external squeezed light and the thermal fluctuations on the squeezing properties of both the intracavity and output pump and signal modes. Our findings showed that the injected squeezed vacuum reservoir enables the intracavity squeezing to surpass the maximum squeezing limit of 50% attainable in a DOPO coupled to an ordinary vacuum reservoir. We also found that the maximum squeezing of the output signal mode shifts from resonance to off-resonance in the presence of the injected squeezed vacuum field. Furthermore, the output pump mode exhibits nearly perfect squeezing for a squeezing parameter of r=2. Unlike the output signal mode, the maximum squeezing of the output pump mode occurs at resonance in the presence of the injected squeezed vacuum reservoir. Moreover, a considerable amount of squeezing is observed even in the presence of thermal fluctuations, as they are counterbalanced by the external squeezed light. Notably, relative damping rate between the pump and signal modes is observed to be a parameter that significantly influences squeezing, indicating the importance of optimizing the amount of damping depending on the intended purpose of the DOPO.
Schrödinger cat states, representing coherent superpositions of macroscopically distinguishable states, are indispensable nonclassical resources for continuous-variable quantum information processing. Existing generation protocols typically rely on strong nonlinear interactions, complicated control techniques, or engineered dissipation, posing challenges for experimental implementation. Here, we propose a simple measurement-based protocol for generating Schrödinger cat states in a cavity-QED system by combining coherent driving, dispersive atom--cavity interactions, and atomic postselection. The atom--cavity interaction establishes coherent correlations between the atomic and photonic degrees of freedom, while the subsequent atomic postselection projects the cavity field onto a non-Gaussian superposition state with pronounced Wigner negativity. Numerical simulations based on the Lindblad master equation show that the generated Schrödinger cat states remain robust against moderate cavity dissipation. Our results demonstrate that conditional atomic measurements provide an effective and experimentally accessible approach for preparing nonclassical cavity states without relying on strong optical nonlinearities or engineered dissipation.
Optical "Schrödinger cat" states, the non-classical superposition of two quasi-classical coherent states, serve as a basis for gedanken experiments testing quantum physics on mesoscopic scales and are increasingly recognized as a resource for quantum information processing. Here, we report the first experimental realization of optical "Schrödinger cats" by adding a photon to a squeezed vacuum state, so far only photon-subtraction protocols have been realized. Photon-addition gives us the advantage of using heralded signal photons as experimental triggers, and we can generate "Schrödinger cats" at rates exceeding 8.5×1048.5 \times 10^48.5×104 counts per second; at least one order of magnitude higher than all previously reported realizations. Wigner distributions with pronounced negative parts are demonstrated at down to -8.89 dB squeezing, even when the initial squeezed vacuum input state has low purity. Benchmarking against such a degraded squeezed input state we report a maximum fidelity of more than 80% with a maximum cat amplitude of ∣α∣≈1.66|α| \approx 1.66∣α∣≈1.66. Our experiment uses photon-addition from pairs, one of those photons is used for monitoring, giving us enhanced control; moreover the pair production rates are high and should allow for repeated application of photon-addition via repeat-stages.