The NOON states play a critical role as physical resources in quantum information processing and quantum metrology, yet their preparation efficiency and applicability are often constrained by complicated operational procedures or the requirement for nonlinear interactions. In this paper, we propose an efficient protocol to generate the NOON states within two microwave cavities embedded in a superconducting system, assisted by an auxiliary five-level qudit. The state preparation is accomplished in three steps for an arbitrary photon number
N by adjusting only external classical fields, while keeping the qudit-cavity coupling strengths and the qudit level spacings fixed. Based on parameters accessible in superconducting systems, numerical simulations show that the protocol achieves relatively high fidelity for the NOON states preparation even in the presence of parameter fluctuations and decoherence effects. Thus, this protocol may provide a practical approach for preparing the NOON states with current technology. Notably, since nonlinear interactions are not required, the protocol is flexible and has the potential to be applied across various physical systems.
We propose an efficient scheme for generating photonic NOON states of two resonators coupled to a four-level superconducting flux device (coupler). This proposal operates essentially by employing a technique of a coupler resonantly interacting with two resonators simultaneously. As a consequence, the NOON-state preparation requires only N+1 operational steps and thus is much faster when compared with a recent proposal [Su et al, Sci. Rep.4, 3898 (2014)] requiring 2N steps of operation. Moreover, due to the use of only two resonators and a coupler, the experimental setup is much simplified when compared with previous proposals requiring three resonators and two superconducting qubits/qutrits.
To generate a NOON state with a large photon number
N, the number of operational steps could be large and the fidelity will decrease rapidly with
N. Here we propose a method to generate a type of quantum entangled states, $(|NN00\ensuremath{\rangle}+|00NN\ensuremath{\rangle})/\sqrt{2}$, called ``double NOON'' states, with a setup of two superconducting flux qutrits and five circuit cavities. This scheme operates essentially by employing a two-photon process; i.e., two photons are simultaneously and separately emitted into two cavities when each coupler qutrit is initially in a higher-energy excited state. As a consequence, the ``double'' NOON state creation needs only
N+2 operational steps. One application of double NOON states is to get a phase error of
1/(2N) in phase measurement. In comparison, to achieve the same error, a normal NOON state of the form $(|2N,0\ensuremath{\rangle}+|0,2N\ensuremath{\rangle})/\sqrt{2}$ is needed, which requires at least
2N operational steps to prepare by using the existing schemes. Our numerical simulation demonstrates that high-fidelity generation of the double NOON states with $N\ensuremath{\le}10$ even for imperfect devices is feasible with the present circuit QED technique.