Atomic physics with a circuit

Nori

Franco Nori

Superconducting circuits using Josephson junctions can behave like atoms making transitions between discrete energy levels. Such circuits can test quantum mechanics at macroscopic scales and be used to conduct atomic-physics experiments on a silicon chip.

Patrice Bertet

This Habilitation reports a series of experiments performed in the field of quantum physics and quantum information, with a variety of physical systems, ranging from Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics with Rydberg atoms coupled to single photons in a microwave cavity, to Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics with electrical circuits behaving as two-level atoms coupled to on-chip superconducting resonators.

Maria Mucci, Nicholas Hougland, Chun-Che Wang +4 more

We demonstrate a circuit QED analog of an atomic micromaser that utilizes an artificial, multi level atom, pumped into a population-inverted state by a microwave tone, as the gain medium. Our demonstration is enabled by the flexibility of the circuit QED platform, which allowed us to precisely engineer the level-structure, coupling, and dissipation of the micromaser components. Our device shows rich physics and perhaps points to ways to use the recent developments in the domain of microwave quantum circuits to probe the domain of maser physics.

Hermann Haken, Hans Christoph Wolf