We realize the dark state in a three-dimensional transmon superconducting qutrit that consists of three cascading energy levels: |0⟩, |1⟩, and |2⟩. When the system is simultaneously driven with two tone microwaves on resonance with |0⟩, |1⟩ and |1⟩, |2⟩, respectively, it is found that the state of the system will generally evolve in time domain. However, the qutrit state is frozen-out if it is initialized in a dark state for corresponding drive amplitudes. We observe this freeze-out phenomenon by changing the amplitude of the microwaves while fixing the initial state or vice versa.
We have observed the Autler-Townes doublet in a superconducting Al/AlO
X/Al transmon qubit that acts as an artificial atom embedded in a three-dimensional Cu microwave cavity at a temperature of 22 mK. Using pulsed microwave spectroscopy, the three lowest transmon levels are isolated, eliminating unwanted effects of higher qubit modes and cavity modes. The long coherence time ($\ensuremath{\sim}$$40\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\text{s}$) of the transmon enables us to observe a clear Autler-Townes splitting at drive amplitudes much smaller than the transmon level anharmonicity (177 MHz). Three-level density matrix simulations with no free parameters provide excellent fits to the data. At maximum separation, the fidelity of a dark state achieved in this experiment is estimated to be
99.6.
Superconducting microwave links have enabled deterministic state transfer and remote entanglement between qubits, but deterministic links have so far operated with an effectively two-dimensional transmitted Hilbert space. Here we demonstrate a superconducting qutrit link between two independently packaged nodes connected by a microwave channel. Each node combines a transmon qutrit, a transmission resonator, and a tunable Purcell-filter interface, allowing the two remote microwave-photon interfaces to be matched in both frequency and bandwidth. We implement two transition-selective photon-mediated operations that transfer the
∣e⟩ and
∣f⟩ qutrit components in distinct temporal modes of the same channel. We tomographically characterize arbitrary qutrit-state transfer, obtaining a mean transferred-state fidelity of 83.68% and a qutrit process fidelity of 77.12%, exceeding both the classical qutrit-transfer benchmark and the best possible average fidelity of an effective qubit channel used to transmit an arbitrary qutrit. Using partial-transfer operations, we reconstruct a remote two-qutrit state with negativity 0.730, a tomography-inferred dense-coding capacity of 2.273 bits, and a tomography-inferred Collins-Gisin-Linden-Massar-Popescu (CGLMP) parameter
I3=2.332, all beyond the corresponding qubit or local bounds. These results demonstrate a superconducting microwave link that uses the native three-level structure of transmons as a genuine high-dimensional communication resource.