Abstract Physics is not scale invariant, and today the scale of atoms and molecules challenges designers of machines in which quantum effects have dominant sway. What role could circuit theory play in designing machines described by quantum‐classical models? Classical equivalent circuits do exist for systems composed of metal contacted and wired devices, such as resonant tunneling diodes, single electron transistors, metal–insulator–metal diodes, etc. circuits, but not for quantum‐entangled networks, such as multi‐quantum‐state atoms. If devices were not contacted and wired by macroscopic metals, i.e. devices were classically field coupled, then generalized circuit models can be introduced. Case studies have been presented on the role of circuit models in quantum‐classical systems. However, there are no ideal circuit elements capable of capturing the port properties of quantum‐mechanical and/or quantum‐optical subsystems and their coupling to classical waveguides or cavities. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Abstract The quantum coherent behaviors of superconducting devices at macroscopic scales and recent technical advances in fine tunability have brought the conventional cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) to superconducting circuits. With an ultra‐strong cavity photon–artificial atom coupling and the inherent nonlinearity of the Josephson junctions, the so‐called circuit QED offers new opportunities to explore new realms of physics that have remained a challenge for conventional cavity QED. Circuit QED has even attracted public attention as the leading architecture for quantum computation. In this article, a pedagogical review of recent studies and activities on exotic quantum states that can be attributed to ultra‐strong coupling is provided. A progress report on attempts to seek the smallest unit of the topological matter and its fundamental interaction with light is also provided.
Engineered quantum systems are poised to revolutionize information science in the near future. A persistent challenge in applied quantum technology is creating controllable, quantum interactions while preventing information loss to the environment, decoherence. In this thesis, we realize mesoscopic superconducting circuits whose macroscopic collective degrees of freedom, such as voltages and currents, behave quantum mechanically. We couple these mesoscopic devices to microwave cavities forming a cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) architecture comprised entirely of circuit elements. This application of cavity QED is dubbed Circuit QED and is an interdisciplinary field seated at the intersection of electrical engineering, superconductivity, quantum optics, and quantum information science. Two popular methods for taming active quantum systems in the presence of decoherence are discrete feedback conditioned on an ancillary system or quantum reservoir engineering. Quantum reservoir engineering maintains a desired subset of a Hilbert space through a combination of drives and designed entropy evacuation. Circuit QED provides a favorable platform for investigating quantum reservoir engineering proposals. A major advancement of this thesis is the development of a quantum reservoir engineering protocol which maintains the quantum state of a microwave cavity in the presence of decoherence. This thesis synthesizes strongly coupled, coherent devices whose solutions to its driven, dissipative Hamiltonian are predicted a priori. This work lays the foundation for future advancements in cavity centered quantum reservoir engineering protocols realizing hardware efficient circuit QED designs.
Summary The article is a short opinionated review of the quantum treatment of electromagnetic circuits, with no pretension to exhaustiveness. This review, which is an updated and modernized version of a previous set of Les Houches School lecture notes, has three main parts. The first part describes how to construct a Hamiltonian for a general circuit, which can include dissipative elements. The second part describes the quantization of the circuit, with an emphasis on the quantum treatment of dissipation. The final part focuses on the Josephson nonlinear element and the main linear building blocks from which superconducting circuits are assembled. It also includes a brief review of the main types of superconducting artificial atoms, elementary multi‐level quantum systems made from basic circuit elements. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Artificially engineered atoms, built using superconducting electrical circuits, have had a broad impact on the field of quantum information and quantum computing. Based on the Josephson effect, superconducting qubits have provided a robust platform for engineering light-matter interactions at the single-photon level. The ability to precisely control and manipulate single photons using superconducting qubits and cavities, a field now popularly known as circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit QED), has enabled new and novel regimes in quantum physics, which previously remained inaccessible. For instance, the coupling between individual photons and artificial atoms have been shown to reach the ultrastrong and deep-strong regimes, a feat which is difficult to achieve with natural atoms. The superconducting circuit platform is now a promising contender for building large-scale quantum processors, attracting large investments from academic, industry and government players. \n \nThis thesis uses superconducting circuits to engineer photon interactions in two separate studies. The first is aimed at studying the physics of ``giant" artificial-atoms. The second study explores the route towards building a quantum heat engine using two parametrically-coupled, superconducting microwave cavities. We review the theoretical ideas and concepts which motivate our work, along with discussions of the design methodology, simulations, fabrication, measurement setup and the experimental findings. \n \nIn the first study, we explore a giant artificial atom, formed from a transmon qubit, which is coupled to propagating microwaves at multiple points along an open transmission line. The multipoint coupling nature of the transmon allows its radiated field to interfere with itself leading to some striking ``giant" atom effects. For instance, we observe strong frequency dependent couplings of the transmon's transition levels to its electromagnetic environment, a feature which is not observed with ordinary artificial atoms. We measure large on/off ratios, as high as
380, for the coupling rate of the
ket0−ket1 transition. Furthermore, we show that we can enhance or suppress the coupling rate of the
ket1−ket2 transition relative to the
ket0−ket1 transition, by more than a factor of
200. The relative modulation of the coupling rates was exploited to engineer a metastable state in the giant transmon and demonstrate electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT), a typical signature of a lambda system. Our results show that we can transform the ladder structure of an ordinary transmon into a more interesting lambda system using a giant transmon, thereby paving the way for exploring new possibilities to study three-level physics in a waveguide-QED setting. \n \nExtending giant atom physics to multiple giant atoms, we then explore a device with two giant artificial atoms connected in a braided configuration to a transmission line. The braided topology of the qubits, offers an interesting regime where the qubits can interact with each other in a decoherence-free environment, where the interaction is mediated by virtual photons in the transmission line. We probe the resonant behavior of the qubits at two different frequency bias points, where we observe qualitatively different scattering behavior. Furthermore, when probing for the Autler-Townes Splitting (ATS), multiple resonances are observed for both resonant and off-resonant cases instead of the familiar doublet in the ATS spectroscopy. This comes as a surprise as the frequency-level spacings in both qubits are nominally identical. We believe these features could be an indication of a novel resonant interaction between the qubits facilitated by the braided topology. An effort to understand this theoretically is underway. \n \nFor our second study, we explore a system with two parametrically-coupled superconducting resonators, which implements an optomechanical-like interaction in an all-electrical network. The nonlinear nature of this interaction is mediated by a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID), where the current in one resonator couples to the photon number in the other resonator. We propose to use this system to build a ``photonic piston" engine in the quantum regime. We motivate the feasibility of the proposal by reviewing key theoretical results which demonstrate an Otto-cycle by appropriately driving the system with noise. Our experimental findings demonstrate the crucial nonlinear coupling that is required for the engine to work. We also show that we can increase the coupling strength between the resonators depending on the chosen flux operating point.