Bosonic modes provide hardware-efficient quantum memories and logical registers, including highly non-Gaussian encoded states, but transferring finite-dimensional bosonic states through a restricted ancilla interface requires identifying which collective mode is actually controlled. We study a restricted setting in which two oscillators couple with opposite signs to a single two-level ancilla. In the normal-mode basis, the symmetric mode is dark, while transfer between the physical modes is equivalent to synthesizing parity on the antisymmetric bright mode. This reduction gives exact finite-sum transfer formulas for Fock states, Fock-state qubits, and finite Fock superpositions, and explains why resonant single-ancilla transfer is recurrence-limited beyond the single-photon sector. We then show that detuned Jaynes--Cummings evolution provides a native two-parameter route to high-fidelity finite-cutoff parity synthesis, with residual ancilla excitation, calibration sensitivity, and a minimal Markovian noise estimate quantified separately. Bosonic-code examples illustrate how transfer sensitivity is governed by photon-number support and residual bright-mode phase errors. The result provides a practical benchmark and organizing principle for constrained ancilla-mediated bosonic transfer when direct exchange is unavailable or undesirable.
Bosonic modes provide hardware-efficient quantum memories and logical registers, including highly non-Gaussian encoded states, but transferring finite-dimensional bosonic states through a restricted ancilla interface requires identifying which collective mode is actually controlled. We study a restricted setting in which two oscillators couple with opposite signs to a single two-level ancilla. In the normal-mode basis, the symmetric mode is dark, while transfer between the physical modes is equivalent to synthesizing parity on the antisymmetric bright mode. This reduction gives exact finite-sum transfer formulas for Fock states, Fock-state qubits, and finite Fock superpositions, and explains why resonant single-ancilla transfer is recurrence-limited beyond the single-photon sector. We then show that detuned Jaynes--Cummings evolution provides a native two-parameter route to high-fidelity finite-cutoff parity synthesis, with residual ancilla excitation, calibration sensitivity, and a minimal Markovian noise estimate quantified separately. Bosonic-code examples illustrate how transfer sensitivity is governed by photon-number support and residual bright-mode phase errors. The result provides a practical benchmark and organizing principle for constrained ancilla-mediated bosonic transfer when direct exchange is unavailable or undesirable.
The Jaynes-Cummings (JC) interaction-the coherent exchange of excitations between a two-level system and a harmonic oscillator-is one of the fundamental interactions of quantum optics, realized across platforms such as cavity quantum electrodynamics, trapped ions, mechanical resonators, and superconducting circuits. Although JC interactions and qubit rotations form a universal gate set for oscillator control, practical implementations have not been demonstrated. Here we develop and experimentally demonstrate universal JC-based oscillator control by compiling arbitrary unitary gates into sequences of JC interactions and qubit rotations. In our experiment, the oscillator is realized using a mode of a high quality factor microwave cavity and the ancilla qubit using a superconducting transmon circuit, with the JC interaction implemented by a sideband interaction enabled by the Josephson nonlinearity. The native gates are constructed to be closed below a chosen cutoff photon number, encoding a qudit with suppressed leakage errors, while ancilla relaxation errors are detectable. We further find that the dispersive shift serves as a compilation resource that reduces circuit depths. We demonstrate universal qudit control and implement a single-qutrit gate set with a mean post-selected process fidelity of 96.3%, as well as ququart and ququint shift gates. These results establish Jaynes-Cummings control as a practical route to universal oscillator control, enabling programmable bosonic processors across a variety of quantum platforms.
Deterministic Fock-state generation and inter-mode SWAP are foundational primitives for bosonic quantum computing, yet most implementations rely on numerically optimized pulses, per-state calibration, strong dispersive coupling, or higher transmon levels, each adding control overhead that grows with system size. We present an analytical, calibration-light protocol operating entirely within the two-level g-e manifold of a weakly dispersively coupled transmon. A Rabi drive on the qubit, combined with a single sideband tone per mode, synthesizes an on-demand Jaynes-Cummings interaction whose entire family of pulse times follows the closed-form scaling τn=τ1/n. Once the single base time τ1 is set, every higher-n operation is fixed analytically, with no per-state retuning, shelving, or numerical optimization. On a superconducting flute cavity with two high-Q modes, we deterministically prepare Fock states through ∣n=5⟩, realize an inter-mode SWAP characterized on vacuum, single-photon, and coherent-state inputs, and generate and coherently swap the dual-rail Bell state (∣1,0⟩+∣0,1⟩)/2, confirming that the operation preserves inter-mode coherence. Because the pulses are constant-amplitude and free of per-state optimization, the achievable fidelity is set directly by ancilla coherence and drive-ramp duration; a master-equation analysis isolates these hardware factors and shows that the analytical scaling itself imposes no obstacle to high-fidelity operation at high n. Requiring only one sideband line per mode and a single Rabi drive, the protocol is well suited to weakly coupled, high-Q 3D architectures where calibration economy and analytical pulse design are at a premium.
Bosonic quantum error correction represents a route towards significant hardware overhead reduction for fault-tolerant quantum computation. However, controlling quantum harmonic oscillators that encode the quantum information comes with its own challenges. In many platforms such as superconducting circuits and trapped ions, the bosonic degree of freedom is controlled by an ancillary qubit whose decay during a qubit-oscillator gate propagates to the oscillator as a continuous error. Such errors generally lie beyond the scope of errors that the bosonic code is capable of correcting. We introduce the continuous-variable flag: an auxiliary oscillator coupled to the ancilla whose phase-space position encodes the continuous error corrupting the storage mode. After the gate, a heterodyne measurement of the flag estimates this continuous-variable error and a subsequent feedback control undoes it up to a bosonic code stabilizer. The scheme requires no new ingredients, as the flag is driven by the same dispersive coupling, displacements and rotations that implement the gates it is supposed to protect. We construct sequences protecting conditional rotations to all orders in ancilla decay with one flag, and conditional displacements to first order with one flag and to all orders with two. Simulations with realistic circuit-QED parameters predict more than three orders of magnitude fewer logical errors for the parity measurement of a four-component cat code, and a finite-energy GKP logical lifetime near its noiseless-ancilla bound. By discretizing continuous-variable errors, the flags introduced in this work are a useful tool for any hybrid oscillator-qubit processor, and open the route towards fault-tolerant simulation and computation with bosonic modes.
The scalable preparation of large photon-number (Fock) states is a long-standing frontier in quantum science, with direct implications for quantum metrology and bosonic quantum information processing. Despite substantial progress at small photon numbers, extending state generation to large photon numbers while maintaining high fidelity and operating deterministically remains a significant challenge. Here we demonstrate a scalable and experimentally accessible control protocol for generating large photon-number states using only native spin--oscillator operations. The protocol alternates Jaynes--Cummings interactions with phase-space displacements to imprint photon-number--dependent phases and convert them into selective interference in photon-number space. It already achieves high preparation fidelity unconditionally, while an optional final qubit projection removes residual qubit--field correlations and further enhances the fidelity. Conditioned on this final projection, photon-number state preparation with fidelities exceeding 0.95 is achieved for photon numbers in the few-hundred regime, with a success probability exceeding 0.90, placing the protocol in a near-deterministic operating regime. The resulting control sequences remain shallow and are robust against detuning, control noise, and experimentally relevant dissipation. Our results establish a practical route to scalable, high-fidelity photon-number state preparation at large photon numbers and provide a versatile interference-engineering toolbox for nonclassical bosonic state synthesis.
Abstract Bosonic quantum error correcting codes are primarily designed to protect against single-photon loss. To correct for this type of error, one can encode the logical qubit in code spaces with a definite photon parity, such as cat codes or binomial codes. Error correction requires a recovery operation that maps the error states—which have opposite parity—back onto the code space. Here, we realize a collection of photon-number-selective, simultaneous photon addition operations on a bosonic mode, a microwave cavity, assisted by a superconducting qubit. These operations are implemented as two-photon transitions that excite the cavity and the qubit at the same time. The additional degree of freedom of the qubit makes it possible to implement a coherent, unidirectional mapping between spaces of opposite photon parity. We present the successful experimental implementation of the drives and the phase control they enable on superpositions of Fock states. The presented technique, when supplemented with qubit reset, is suitable for autonomous quantum error correction in bosonic systems and, more generally, opens the possibility to realize a range of non-unitary transformations on a bosonic mode.
Universal control of bosonic degrees of freedom provides a hardware-efficient route for quantum information processing with high-dimensional systems. Bosonic circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED), which leverages auxillary transmons to coherently control long-lived superconducting cavities, is well suited to this goal. However, such systems are traditionally operated in the dispersive regime, where the nearly degenerate cavity transitions prohibit the direct addressability of individual excitation levels of the bosonic mode and increase gate complexity. Here, we achieve direct oscillator control by dynamically accessing the resonant Jaynes-Cummings (JC) interactions, implemented with a hardware that integrates on-chip broadband magnetic flux delivery with a bosonic memory housed in a 3D superconducting cavity with lifetime exceeding 0.5 ms. We demonstrate deterministic preparation of Fock states and their superpositions within 100s of nanoseconds by directly climbing the JC ladder, and realise efficient arbitrary rotations between any pair of Fock states. Our resonant control scheme provides an analytical method for manipulating the entire Hilbert space of the bosonic mode at rates fundamentally more favourable than traditional dispersive strategies. This on-demand access to JC interactions opens a promising path toward realising robust Fock-basis qudits and harnessing the rich dynamics of high-dimensional bosonic systems for quantum information processing.