Nicolas Didier

Detecting phonon blockade with photons

Measuring the quantum dynamics of a mechanical system, when few phonons are involved, remains a challenge. We show that a superconducting microwave resonator linearly coupled to the mechanical mode constitutes a very powerful probe for this scope. This new coupling can be much stronger than the usual radiation pressure interaction by adjusting a gate voltage. We focus on the detection of phonon blockade, showing that it can be observed by measuring the statistics of the light in the cavity. The underlying reason is the formation of an entangled state between the two resonators. Our scheme realizes a phonotonic Josephson junction, giving rise to coherent oscillations between phonons and photons as well as a self-trapping regime for a coupling smaller than a critical value. The transition from the self-trapping to the oscillating regime is also induced dynamically by dissipation.

Antibunching and unconventional photon blockade with Gaussian squeezed states

Photon antibunching is a quantum phenomenon typically observed in strongly nonlinear systems where photon blockade suppresses the probability for detecting two photons at the same time. Antibunching has also been reported with Gaussian states, where optimized amplitude squeezing yields classically forbidden values of the intensity correlation,

Enhanced nonlinear interactions in quantum optomechanics via mechanical amplification

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Fast Quantum Nondemolition Readout by Parametric Modulation of Longitudinal Qubit-Oscillator Interaction.

. As a consequence, observing antibunching is not necessarily a signature of photon-photon interactions. To clarify the significance of the intensity correlations, we derive a sufficient condition for deducing if a field is non-Gaussian based on a

Fast and high-fidelity entangling gate through parametrically modulated longitudinal coupling

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Heisenberg-Limited Qubit Read-Out with Two-Mode Squeezed Light

measurement. We then show that the Gaussian antibunching obtained with a degenerate parametric amplifier is close to the ideal case reached using dissipative squeezing protocols. We finally shed light on the so-called unconventional photon blockade effect predicted in a driven two-cavity setup with surprisingly weak Kerr nonlinearities, stressing that it is a particular realization of optimized Gaussian amplitude squeezing.

Perfect squeezing by damping modulation in circuit quantum electrodynamics

The quantum nonlinear regime of optomechanics is reached when nonlinear effects of the radiation pressure interaction are observed at the single-photon level. This requires couplings larger than the mechanical frequency and cavity-damping rate, and is difficult to achieve experimentally. Here we show how to exponentially enhance the single-photon optomechanical coupling strength using only additional linear resources. Our method is based on using a large-amplitude, strongly detuned mechanical parametric drive to amplify mechanical zero-point fluctuations and hence enhance the radiation pressure interaction. It has the further benefit of allowing time-dependent control, enabling pulsed schemes. For a two-cavity optomechanical set-up, we show that our scheme generates photon blockade for experimentally accessible parameters, and even makes the production of photonic states with negative Wigner functions possible. We discuss how our method is an example of a more general strategy for enhancing boson-mediated two-particle interactions and nonlinearities.

Photon Production from the Vacuum Close to the Superradiant Transition: Linking the Dynamical Casimir Effect to the Kibble-Zurek Mechanism

We show how to realize fast and high-fidelity quantum nondemolition qubit readout using longitudinal qubit-oscillator interaction. This is accomplished by modulating the longitudinal coupling at the cavity frequency. The qubit-oscillator interaction then acts as a qubit-state dependent drive on the cavity, a situation that is fundamentally different from the standard dispersive case. Single-mode squeezing can be exploited to exponentially increase the signal-to-noise ratio of this readout protocol. We present an implementation of this longitudinal parametric readout in circuit quantum electrodynamics and a possible multiqubit architecture.

Quantum charge diffusion in underdamped Josephson junctions and superconducting nanowires

We investigate an approach to universal quantum computation based on the modulation of longitudinal qubit-oscillator coupling. We show how to realize a controlled-phase gate by simultaneously modulating the longitudinal coupling of two qubits to a common oscillator mode. In contrast to the more familiar transversal qubit-oscillator coupling, the magnitude of the effective qubit-qubit interaction does not rely on a small perturbative parameter. As a result, this effective interaction strength can be made large, leading to short gate times and high gate fidelities. We moreover show how the gate infidelity can be exponentially suppressed with squeezing and how the entangling gate can be generalized to qubits coupled to separate oscillators. Our proposal can be realized in multiple physical platforms for quantum computing, including superconducting and spin qubits.

Josephson-Majorana cycle in topological single-electron hybrid transistors

We show how to use two-mode squeezed light to exponentially enhance cavity-based dispersive qubit measurement. Our scheme enables true Heisenberg-limited scaling of the measurement, and crucially, it is not restricted to small dispersive couplings or unrealistically long measurement times. It involves coupling a qubit dispersively to two cavities and making use of a symmetry in the dynamics of joint cavity quadratures (a so-called quantum-mechanics-free subsystem). We discuss the basic scaling of the scheme and its robustness against imperfections, as well as a realistic implementation in circuit quantum electrodynamics.