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arXiv:2503.21089 · Physical Review A

Dispersive regime of multiphoton qubit-oscillator interactions

Mohammad Ayyash, Sahel Ashhab

Published Aug 4, 2025• 2 citations
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Abstract

The dispersive regime of $n$-photon qubit-oscillator interactions is analyzed using Schrieffer-Wolff perturbation theory. Effective Hamiltonians are derived up to the second order in the perturbation parameters. These effective descriptions reveal higher-order qubit-oscillator cross-Kerr and oscillator self-Kerr terms. The cross-Kerr term combines a qubit Pauli operator with an $n$-degree polynomial in the oscillator photon number operator, while the self-Kerr term is an $(n\ensuremath{-}1)$-degree polynomial in the oscillator photon number operator. In addition to the higher-order Kerr terms, a qubit-conditional $2n$-photon squeezing term appears in the effective non-rotating-wave-approximation Hamiltonian. Furthermore, perturbation theory is applied to the case of multiple qubits coupled to a shared oscillator. A photon-number-dependent qubit-qubit interaction emerges in this case, which can be leveraged to tune the effective multiqubit system parameters using the oscillator state. Results for the converse setup of multiple oscillators and a single qubit are also derived. In this case, a qubit-conditional oscillator-oscillator nonlinear interaction is found. The spectral instabilities plaguing multiphoton qubit-oscillator models are carefully treated by introducing stabilizing higher-order terms in the Hamiltonian. The stabilizing terms preserve low-photon subspaces, avoid negative infinite energies, and facilitate reliable numerical calculations used to validate analytical predictions. The effective descriptions developed here offer a simple and intuitive physical picture of dispersive multiphoton qubit-oscillator interactions that can aid in the design of implementations harnessing various nonlinear effects.

DOI
10.1103/hrc2-7nqg

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The dispersive regime of nnn-photon qubit-oscillator interactions is analyzed using Schrieffer-Wolff perturbation theory. Effective Hamiltonians are derived up to the second order in the perturbation parameters. These effective descriptions reveal higher-order qubit-oscillator cross-Kerr and oscillator self-Kerr terms. The cross-Kerr term combines a qubit Pauli operator with an nnn-degree polynomial in the oscillator photon number operator, while the self-Kerr term is an (n\ensuremath−1)(n\ensuremath{-}1)(n\ensuremath−1)-degree polynomial in the oscillator photon number operator. In addition to the higher-order Kerr terms, a qubit-conditional 2n2n2n-photon squeezing term appears in the effective non-rotating-wave-approximation Hamiltonian. Furthermore, perturbation theory is applied to the case of multiple qubits coupled to a shared oscillator. A photon-number-dependent qubit-qubit interaction emerges in this case, which can be leveraged to tune the effective multiqubit system parameters using the oscillator state. Results for the converse setup of multiple oscillators and a single qubit are also derived. In this case, a qubit-conditional oscillator-oscillator nonlinear interaction is found. The spectral instabilities plaguing multiphoton qubit-oscillator models are carefully treated by introducing stabilizing higher-order terms in the Hamiltonian. The stabilizing terms preserve low-photon subspaces, avoid negative infinite energies, and facilitate reliable numerical calculations used to validate analytical predictions. The effective descriptions developed here offer a simple and intuitive physical picture of dispersive multiphoton qubit-oscillator interactions that can aid in the design of implementations harnessing various nonlinear effects.
We investigate a generic tripartite quantum system featuring a single qubit interacting concurrently with two quantized harmonic oscillators via nonlinear multiphoton Jaynes-Cummings (MPJC) interactions. Assuming the qubit is initially prepared in a superposition state and the two oscillators are in arbitrary Fock states, we analytically trace the temporal evolution of this tripartite pure initial state. We identify four broad cases, each further divided into two subcases, and derive exact analytical solutions for most cases. Notably, we obtain perfect transfer of excitations between the oscillators by carefully selecting system parameters. In addition, we extensively examine the manner in which the nonclassicalities of various initial oscillator Fock states, quantified by the volume of negative regions in the associated Wigner functions, evolve under the MPJC Hamiltonian, considering diverse system parameters including environmental effects. Besides producing substantial enhancements in the initial value for higher-photon-number states, our analysis reveals that driven solely by the initial qubit energy, with both oscillators initialized in the vacuum state, the nonlinear MPJC interaction yields a significant amount of nontrivial Wigner negativity in the oscillators. The additional nonlinearity introduced by the multiphoton process plays a pivotal role in surpassing the initial nonclassicalities of the photon-number states.
We develop a general theory for multiphoton qubit-resonator interactions enhanced by a qubit drive. The interactions generate qubit-conditional operations in the resonator when the driving is near nnn-photon cross resonance, i.e., when the qubit drive is nnn times the resonator frequency. We pay special attention to the strong driving regime, where the resulting effective interactions are conditioned on the qubit dressed states. Next, we investigate the use of a two-tone drive to engineer an effective nnn-photon Rabi Hamiltonian with widely tunable effective system parameters, which could enable the realization of new regimes that have so far been inaccessible. Then, we discuss applications for the specific case where n=2n=2n=2, which results in qubit-conditional squeezing (QCS). We show that the QCS protocol can be used to generate a superposition of orthogonally squeezed states following a properly chosen qubit measurement. We outline quantum information processing applications for these states, including encoding a qubit in a resonator via the superposition of orthogonally squeezed states. We show how the QCS operation can be used to realize a controlled-squeeze gate and its use in bosonic phase estimation. The QCS protocol can also be utilized to achieve faster unitary operator synthesis on the joint qubit-resonator Hilbert space. Finally, we propose a multiphoton circuit QED implementation based on a transmon qubit coupled to a resonator via an asymmetric SQUID. We provide realistic parameter estimates for the two-photon operation regime that can host the aforementioned two-photon protocols. We use numerical simulations to show that, even in the presence of spurious terms and decoherence, our analytical predictions are robust.
We investigate the quantum properties of a nonlinear Kerr oscillator driven by a three-photon pump. We derive both exact and approximate analytical expressions for the ground state of this interacting model. The exact solution arises at an exact spectral degeneracy, while the approximate solution describes regimes of quasi-degeneracy of the energy spectrum. In both cases, the threefold (quasi)degenerate ground-state manifold consists of quantum superpositions of three macroscopically distinct states. These states differ qualitatively from conventional three-component Schrödinger's cat states due to the presence of squeezing with a distinctive parametric dependence. By varying the detuning between the oscillator and the three-photon pump, we show that the squeezing can be enhanced, suppressed, or even reversed, leading to a squeezing-to-anti-squeezing transition. We analyze the generation and stabilization of these superposition states, their robustness against perturbations and analytically quantify the leakage to excited states. Our analysis elucidates how the three-photon Kerr parametric oscillator can be used to encode a Kerr-cat qutrit protected against phase-flip errors.
We generalize the dispersive theory of the Jaynes-Cummings model beyond the frequently employed rotating-wave approximation (RWA) in the coupling between the two-level system and the resonator. For a detuning sufficiently larger than the qubit-oscillator coupling, we diagonalize the non-RWA Hamiltonian and discuss the differences to the known RWA results. Our results extend the regime in which dispersive qubit readout is possible. If several qubits are coupled to one resonator, an effective qubit-qubit interaction of Ising type emerges, whereas RWA leads to isotropic XYXYXY interaction. This impacts on the entanglement characteristics of the qubits.
Modern quantum physics is very modular: we first understand basic building blocks (``XXZ Hamiltonian'' ``Jaynes-Cummings'' etc.) and then combine them to explore novel effects. A typical example is placing known systems inside an optical cavity. The Schrieffer-Wolff perturbation method is particularly suited for dealing with these problems, since it casts the perturbation expansion in terms of operator corrections to a Hamiltonian, which is more intuitive than energy level corrections, as in traditional time-independent perturbation theory. However, the method lacks a systematic approach.% and has largely remained a niche topic. In these notes we discuss how \emph{eigenoperator decompositions}, a concept largely used in open quantum systems, can be employed to construct an intuitive and systematic formulation of Schrieffer-Wolff perturbation theory. To illustrate this we revisit various papers in the literature, old and new, and show how they can instead be solved using eigenoperators. Particular emphasis is given to perturbations that couple two systems with very different transition frequencies (highly off-resonance), leading to the so-called dispersive interactions.
Weak cross-Kerr nonlinearities between single photons and coherent states are the basis for many applications in quantum-information processing. These nonlinearities have so far mainly been discussed in terms of highly idealized single-mode models. We develop a general theory of the interaction between continuous-mode photonic pulses and apply it to the case of a single photon interacting with a coherent state. We quantitatively study the validity of the usual single-mode approximation using the concepts of fidelity and conditional phase. We show that high fidelities, nonzero conditional phases, and high photon numbers are compatible, under conditions where the pulses fully pass through each other and where unwanted transverse-mode effects are suppressed.