We study a qubit-oscillator system, with a time-dependent coupling coefficient, and present a fast scheme for generating entangled Schr\"odinger-cat states with large mean photon numbers and also a scheme that protects the cat states against dephasing caused by the nonlinearity in the system. We focus on the case where the qubit frequency is small compared to the oscillator frequency. We first present the exact quantum state evolution in the limit of infinitesimal qubit frequency. We then analyze the first-order effect of the nonzero qubit frequency. Our scheme works for a wide range of coupling strength values, including the recently achieved deep-strong-coupling regime.
Schrödinger cat states play an important role for applications in continuous variable quantum information technologies. As macroscopic superpositions, they are inherently protected against certain types of noise making cat qubits a promising candidate for quantum computing. It has been shown recently that cat states occur naturally in driven Kerr parametric oscillators as degenerate ground states with even and odd parity that are adiabatically connected to the respective lowest two Fock states by switching off the drive. To perform operations with several cat qubits, one crucial task is to create entanglement between them. Here, we demonstrate efficient transformations of multimode cat states through adiabatic and diabatic switching between Kerr-type Hamiltonians with degenerate ground-state manifolds. These transformations can be used to directly initialize the cats as entangled Bell states in contrast to initializing them from entangled Fock states.
In quantum information processing, two primary research directions have emerged: one based on discrete variables (DV) and the other on the structure of quantum states in a continuous-variable (CV) space. Integrating these two approaches could unlock new potentials, overcoming their respective limitations. Here, we show that such a DV–CV hybrid approach, applied to superconducting Kerr parametric oscillators (KPOs), enables us to entangle a pair of Schrödinger’s cat states by two methods. The first involves the entanglement-preserving conversion between Bell states in the Fock-state basis (DV encoding) and those in the cat-state basis (CV encoding). The second method implements a iSWAP gate between two cat states following the procedure for Fock-state encoding. This simple and fast gate operation completes a universal quantum gate set in a KPO system. Our work offers powerful applications of DV–CV hybridization and marks a first step toward developing a multi-qubit platform based on planar KPO systems. Quantum information processing normally uses either discrete- or continuous-variable encoding. Here, the authors bridge the two approaches, showing how to entangle Schrodinger’s cats states by conversion between Bell states in the Fock and cat bases and by a simple Fock-state-like gate operation.
We present a method for preparing various exotic modifications of Schr{ö}dinger cat states by coupling a semiclassical oscillator to a system of qubits. Varying the number of qubits and parameters of the protocol (involving quantum quench of the coupled system and a subsequent spin measurement), we bring the oscillator into a coherent superposition composed of an arbitrary number of wavepackets in tunable proportions and motion relations. The method can be implemented with the aid of current experimental techniques and may find applications in quantum information and sensing protocols.