Professional Documents
Culture Documents
net/publication/256097511
CITATIONS READS
82 221
3 authors:
Michael J Hartmann
Heriot-Watt University
99 PUBLICATIONS 4,386 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
Stationary States of Dissipative Many-Body Quantum Systems via Matrix Product Operators View project
All content following this page was uploaded by Martin Leib on 26 May 2014.
Photons are the most suitable carrier for transmitting ability is questionable in previous proposals which are
information over long distances as they are largely im- based on different technological platforms [3, 4]. More-
mune to environmental perturbations, and can propa- over the device we propose is a passive element that does
gate with very low loss and long-lived coherence in a not require any temporal tuning. This implies that the
wide range of media [1]. The use of photons in infor- arrival time of the photons at the scattering center can
mation processing however still suffers from the inability be completely unknown.
to realize controlled, strong interactions between indi- A technology that is ideally suited for realizing the de-
vidual photons. To make photons a more versatile in- vice we envision is provided by itinerant microwave pho-
formation carrier, it is therefore of great importance to tons in superconducting circuits [5, 6]. Here, coherent
conceive means of making photonic signals interact with scattering at a superconducting qubit [7–9] and entan-
each other [2]. In vacuum, direct photon-photon inter- glement with a qubit [10] have been demonstrated for
actions are absent. Nonetheless, optical signals can in- individual photons that propagate in open transmission
fluence each other in nonlinear media. Yet, the quantum lines. Moreover precise shaping of single photons pulses
regime with interactions between individual photons only has been shown [11] very recently. An implementation of
becomes accessible for devices where optical nonlineari- our approach in circuit quantum electrodynamics thus
ties exceed incoherent and dissipative processes. Such requires two superconducting qubits that are coupled
devices therefore require a strong coupling of the pho- to open transmission lines. We show that the desired
tons to the material that mediates the effective photon- qubit-qubit interaction can be realized with two trans-
photon interactions. Since the coupling of light to matter mon qubits [12] that are coupled via a SQUID which can
can be enhanced if light fields are confined to small vol- be tuned to ensure that no excitations are exchanged be-
umes in space, cavities and one-dimensional waveguides tween both transmons. Importantly, this coupling is not
are prime candidates for such devices. dispersive [13] and thus strong as both transmons have
Here we introduce a scheme for a quantum single pho- the same transition frequency. These rather unique pos-
ton transistor, a device that can be considered to form sibilities for qubit-qubit interactions offered by supercon-
a cornerstone of quantum optical information process- ducting circuits are very suitable for our aims. Moreover,
ing. In our approach individual photons propagate in two their robustness with respect to dephasing noise make
one-dimensional waveguides of low transverse dimension transmons ideal qubits for our device. Yet, alternatively
and scatter off each other at a localized scattering center one could also use two flux qubits that are coupled via
formed by two two-level systems (qubits) that each cou- an induction loop [14, 15].
ple to one of the waveguides, see figure 1a. The qubits To demonstrate the capabilities of the single photon
interact in such a way that no excitations can be ex- transistor we propose, we provide results for the photon
changed between them and thus ensure that each pho- reflection and transmission spectra and probabilities for
ton remains in its initial waveguide after the scattering both transmission lines, which depend on the incoming
event. Nonetheless, as we show below, the presence of a single or two-photon pulses. Furthermore, we determine
single photon in one waveguide can completely block or the achievable strength of photon-photon interactions un-
enable the propagation of a photon in the other waveg- der realistic experimental conditions, i.e. taking into ac-
uide. Importantly, our approach considers propagating count all dissipative processes in our setup.
light signals that all have the same carrier frequency and Setup We consider two interacting qubits that each
is thus inherently scalable as the output signals of one couple to a one-dimensional waveguide in which the pho-
transistor can enter as input signals into a consecutive tons propagate. Here we focus on a setup for which we
transistor, c.f. figure 1c for an illustration. Such scal- can refer to a control and a target photon, where the
2
R∞
!t scribed by the Hamiltonian [20], HT = −∞ dp p (rp† rp −
a ∞
lp† lp ) + −∞ dp p b†p bp , where rp† (lp† ) creates a photon in
R
⌧t
subsystem 1 which travels to the right (left) and b†p cre-
1/⌧1 ates a photon in subsystem 2. p = vg η where vg is the
!1 subsystem 1 group velocity and the wave vector η is negative (posi-
J tive) for left (right) going modes. The transmission line of
!c
!2
subsystem 2 is cut and can be described by only one con-
⌧c subsystem 2 tinuum of modes since the incoming and outgoing modes
1/⌧2
of a semi-infinite transmission line can be mapped to an
infinite waveguide where photons only propagate in one
b c direction [17].
Thursday, November 22, 12
The dispersion relation of a transmission line is lin-
ear and the frequency integration can be extended to
±∞ since we only consider single photon pulses with a
frequency width that is much smaller than their carrier
frequency. For these narrow linewidth pulses we thus
take the photon-qubit coupling to be independent of the
photon frequency,
Z ∞
Thursday, November 22, 12
1
FIG. 1: Sketch of the considered setup. a) Two photons HI = √ dp[σ1+ (rp + lp ) + σ1− (rp† + lp† )] (2)
Thursday, November 22, 12
traveling in separate waveguides scatter off each other at a 2πτ1 −∞
scattering center formed by two interacting qubits. b) Since Z ∞
1
all photons have the same frequency, multiple devices can +√ dp[σ2+ bp + σ2− b†p ].
be concatenated to form a network. c) Level scheme of the πτ2 −∞
scattering center Hamiltonian Hsys , c.f. equation (1).
Here τ1 and τ2 are the lifetimes of the two level systems
associated to their coupling to the transmission lines. A
presence of the control photon influences the target pho- further benefit√ of the semi-infinite waveguide in subsys-
ton’s direction of propagation, while the control photon’s tem 2 is the 2 enhancement of the coupling in HI . Fig-
direction of propagation always changes. A sketch of this ure 1b shows the level scheme of the two qubits described
setup is shown in figure 1. The control photon propagates by Hsys and the transitions induced by the photons.
in the waveguide of subsystem 2, c.f. figure 1, which has In a realistic system, the qubits will be subject to dissi-
a closed end right where it couples to qubit 2. This ar- pation. We thus consider for each qubit a coupling to an
rangement enhances the absorption of photons by qubit environment which we model as a continuum of bosonic
2 and hence its inversion as compared to an open waveg- modes with creation operators c†p respectively d†p and the
R∞ R∞
uide end, a property that is not necessary but beneficial Hamiltonian HB = −∞ dp p c†p cp + −∞ dp p d†p dp . The
for our aims. The control photon is thus always reflected. couplingR ∞of the qubits to their environments reads HBI =
γ/π −∞ dp (σ1+ cp + σ1− c†p ) + (σ2+ dp + σ2− d†p ) , where
p
The target photon in turn propagates in the waveguide of
subsystem 1. The qubit-qubit interaction is such that no γ is the relaxation rate of the qubits. The total Hamil-
excitations are exchanged between the two qubits. This tonian that includes the environment, the transmission
implies that a photon in one waveguide can not tunnel lines, the qubits and all couplings between these con-
to the other waveguide and vice versa. Nonetheless one stituents thus reads,
control photon in waveguide 2 can completely block re-
spectively enable the propagation of a target photon in H = HT + Hsys + HI + HB + HBI . (3)
waveguide 1 as we show below. The Hamiltonian of the
two coupled qubits reads, To investigate the dynamics of single photon pulses in
this setup, we combine quantum scattering theory [18]
ω1 z ω2 z
Hsys = σ + σ − Jσ1z σ2z , (1) with the input-output formalism [19] of quantum optics
2 1 2 2 as in [20], see supplementary material [16] for details.
where the σiz are Pauli-operators, ω1 and ω2 the transi- For the dynamics of the qubit operators, including dissi-
tion frequencies of the two qubits and J the strength of pative processes, we derive quantum Langevin equations
their mutual interaction. This Hamiltonian can be im- [21] starting from the Hamiltonian (3). The solutions of
plemented with two transmon qubits that are coupled via these yield the source terms for the input-output rela-
a SQUID, see figure 3 and supplementary material [16], tions which we then relate to the scattering matrix [16].
or with two inductively coupled flux qubits [14, 15]. Photon-Photon Interaction To see the effect of the
Both waveguides respectively transmission lines have photon-photon interaction most clearly, we first consider
a continuous spectrum of photonic modes and can be de- the situation in which only one target photon but no
3
control photon is present. An incoming target pho- k) + τc−1 ]}−1 . We note that our results do not change
Rton that travels to the right is described by |Ψt i = if the target photon pulse also has the shape of an in-
dk αt (k) r† (k)|0i, where k labels the frequency compo- verting pulse so that our scheme is indeed scalable. Due
nents. We assume for the target photon a pulse with a to the coupling to vacuum, the qubit 2 is of course never
√
Lorentzian frequency distribution, αt (k) = { πτt [i(ωt − Rcompletely P The output state reads, |Ψout i =
P inverted.
k) + τt−1 ]}−1 . Here τt is the temporal width of the pulse dp1 dp2 i=r,l,c j=b,d βi,j (p1 , p2 )i† (p1 )j † (p2 )|0i. The
and ωt its carrier frequency. A pulse of this form would first index in the amplitudes βi,j (p1 , p2 ) refers to the tar-
for example describe a photon that was spontaneously get photon, which can be reflected, l, transmitted, r, or
emitted into the transmission line from an excited qubit lost, c, and the second index refers to the control photon
as experimentally realized in [22]. We here chose to oper- which can be reflected, b, or lost, d. For the probability
ate the transistor such that the target photon is reflected of the target photon being transmitted in the presence of
in the absence but unaffected in the presence of the con- a control photon we thus get,
trol photon and choose ωt to be equal to the frequency Z h i
of the transition |g1 g2 i → |e1 g2 i (|gj i/|eij denotes qubit 2 2
pT C = dp1 dp2 |βr,b (p1 , p2 )| + |βr,d (p1 , p2 )| . (5)
j in the ground/excited state), i.e. ωt = ω1 + 2J. The
reverse mode of operation where the target photon is un-
We now quantify the performance of the single pho-
affected in the absence and reflected in the presence of the
ton transistor we propose via the difference Cs and ratio
control photon can be selected by choosing ωt = ω1 − 2J
Rs between the transmission probabilities for the target
and works equally well. Without control photon evi-
photon in the presence and absence of a control photon,
dently no photon-photon interaction R can P take place and
the output state reads, |Ψout i = dp i=r,l,c βi (p)i†p |0i, Cs = pT C − pT and Rs = pT C /pT , (6)
where the transmission amplitude is denoted βr (p), the
reflection amplitude βl (p) and the amplitude for the tar- where pT C and pT are given in equations (4) and (5) re-
get photon being lost βc (p).R These amplitudes relate to spectively. For Cs = 1 the setup would describe an ideal
the initial state via βi (p) = dk αt (k) Si (k, p), where the quantum transistor for single photons. Figure 2 shows
Si (k, p) are the S-matrix elements for the different pro- the achievable transmission contrast, Cs , and on-off ratio,
cesses, see supplementary material [16]. The resulting Rs , for a realistic device with given qubit-qubit coupling
transmission probability for the target photon reads, of J = 0.01 ω1 as a function of the qubit decay rate γ.
τ1 + τ12 γ + (τ1 γ)2 τt As the plot shows, an ideal single photon transistor can
pT = (4) be realized in the limit of vanishing γ/ω1 whereas very
(1 + τ1 γ)(τ1 + τt + τt τ1 γ)
good performance can already be expected for currently
and the reflection probability pR = τt /(1 + τ1 γ)(τ1 + τt + realized values of J ∼ 50 MHz and γ/ω1 ∼ 10−6 [25–27],
τt τ1 γ). We note that pT + pR < 1 because the photon where a single control photon changes the transmission
can also be lost due to qubit relaxation. Importantly, in probability of the target photon by a factor 20.
the regime of γ −1 τt τ1 , the reflection probability The performance of the single photon transistor we
for the target photon approaches unity [3]. propose depends on the shapes of the target and con-
Next we consider the case of the same incident target trol photon pulses and the parameters of the Hamilto-
photon but now in the presence of an incoming control nian (3). As expected the best choices for the carrier
photon. As the control photon inverts qubit 2, the scat- frequencies of the control and target pulses are equal to
tering center is in the state |g1 e2 i and the target pho- the transition frequencies of |g1 g2 i → |g1 e2 i respectively
ton can only couple to the transition |g1 e2 i → |e1 e2 i, |g1 g2 i → |e1 g2 i, i.e. ωc = ω2 + 2J and ωt = ω1 + 2J. For
see figure 1b. This transition is detuned by 4J from a single transistor ω1 and ω2 may be chosen arbitrarily.
the target photon frequency, and thus the transmission Yet to enable concatenation of multiple transistors, we
probability for the target photon approaches unity if J choose ω1 = ω2 . Moreover the interaction of the target
is large compared to the linewidths of target pulse and photon with qubit 1 should be as high as possible. We
qubit 1, J τ1−1 + τt−1 . Our scheme works best if choose τ1 = 20/ω1 which is compatible with experiments.
the control photon pulse is chosen such that it maxi- For a control photon which is an inverting pulse, i.e. the
mally inverts qubit 2. A suitable pulse is thus the time time reversed version of a photon that would result from
reversed version of a pulse resulting from spontaneous a spontaneous emission process, the optimal choice for
emission of qubit 2 into the transmission line [23] which its temporal width is obviously τc = τ2 . There are thus
is often called an inverting pulse [24]. The generation two remaining parameters, τt and τc , which we have op-
of inverting pulses and their release into a transmis- timized numerically. The results are shown in figures 2b
sion line was demonstrated recently [11]. For the cut and 2c, where we show the optimal choices of τt and τc
transmission line in subsystem 2 an inverting pulse of as a function of γ/ω1 .
carrier frequency ωc and temporal width τc thus reads Coupled transmons As stated above, the qubit-qubit
√
|Ψc i = dk αc (k) b†k |0i with αc (k) = { πτc [−i(ωc −
R
interaction in equation (1) can be realized with two
4
a b 100
0.8 50
pT
pT C /pT
0.6 20
10
pT C
0.4 5
0.2 2
!8 !7 !6 !5 !4
10 10 10 10 10 0.001 10!8 10!7 10!6 10!5 10!4 0.001
c /!1 d /!1
1 " 10 4
1 " 106
5 " 105
5000
1 " 105
2000 5 " 104
⌧c ! 1
⌧t ! 1
Delsing, and C.M. Wilson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 263601 of transmission of a single photon, the S-matrix element
(2012) reads,
[10] C. Eichler, C. Lang, J. M. Fink, J. Govenius, S. Filipp,
and A. Wallraff, arXiv:1209.0441 †
Sr (k, p) = h0|rout (p)rin (k)|0i, (8)
[11] Y. Yin, Y. Chen, D. Sank, P.J.J. O’Malley, T.C. White,
R. Barends, J. Kelly, E. Lucero, M. Mariantoni, A. where
Megrant, C. Neill, A. Vainsencher, J. Wenner, A.N. Ko-
rotkov, A.N. Cleland and J.M. Martinis, arXiv:1208.2950 †
rin/out (ω) = lim eiHt0 e−iHT t0 r† (ω)eiHT t0 e−iHt0 , (9)
[12] J. Koch, T.M. Yu, J. Gambetta, A.A. Houck, D.I. Schus- t0 →∓∞
ter, J. Majer, A. Blais, M.H. Devoret, S.M. Girvin, and R∞ R∞
R.J. Schoelkopf, Phys. Rev. A 76, 042319 (2007). and HT = −∞ dp p (rp† rp − lp† lp ) + −∞ dp p b†p bp is as in
[13] G. Kirchmair, B. Vlastakis, Z. Leghtas, S.E. Nigg, H. the main text. In turn, for a two photon process, where
Paik, E. Ginossar, M. Mirrahimi, L. Frunzio, S.M. the target photon is transmitted and the control photon
Girvin, and R.J. Schoelkopf, arXiv:1211.2228
is lost in the vacuum, the S-matrix element reads,
[14] T.P. Orlando et al.,Phys. Rev. B 60, 15398 (2000)
[15] J.E. Mooij et al, Science 60, 1036 (1999) †
[16] see Supplementary Material
Sr,d (k, k 0 , p, p0 ) = h0|rout,p dout,p0 rin,k b†in,k0 |0i (10)
[17] J.T. Shen and S. Fan, Phys. Rev. A 79, 023837 (2009)
[18] J.R. Taylor, Scattering Theory: the Quantum Theory of For our system it is convenient to introduce even and odd
Nonrelativistic Collisions (Dover, New York, 2006), Sec. modes for transmission line 1,
9-e and Chap. 10
[19] C. W. Gardiner and M. J. Collet, Phys. Rev. A, 31, 6 1
a1 (p) = √ (rp + l−p ) (11)
(1985) 2
[20] S. Fan, S. E. Kocabas J.T. Shen, Phys. Rev. A 82, 063821 1
(2010) å1 (p) = √ (rp − l−p ) (12)
[21] C. W. Gardiner and P. Zoller, Quantum Noise, Springer-
2
Verlag, (2000). Due to the form of the photon-qubit coupling in equation
[22] C. Eichler, D. Bozyigit, C. Lang, L. Steffen, J. Fink, and
A. Wallraff, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 220503 (2011).
(2) of the main text, only even modes couple to the qubit
[23] J.I. Cirac, P. Zoller, H.J. Kimble, and H. Mabuchi, Phys. whereas odd modes completely decouple from the rest of
Rev. Lett. 78, 3221 (1997) the system and describe freely propagating photons. The
[24] E. Rephaeli, J.T. Shen, S. Fan, Phys. Rev. A, 82, 033804 coupling √ strength to the even modes is enhanced by a
(2010) factor of 2.
[25] M. Sandberg, M.R. Vissers, T. Ohki, J. Gao, J. Aumen- To calculate the desired scattering matrix elements a
tado, M. Weides, and D.P. Pappas, arXiv:1211.2017 link to equations of motion, i.e. the Langevin equations
[26] C. Rigetti, J.M. Gambetta, S. Poletto, B.L.T. Plourde,
J.M. Chow, A.D. Córcoles, J.A. Smolin, S.T. Merkel,
[19] that describe the dynamics of the scattering center
J.R. Rozen, G.A. Keefe, M.B. Rothwell, M.B. Ketchen, is exploited. To make use of the Langevin equations, it
and M. Steffen, Phys. Rev. B 86, 100506(R) (2012). is necessary to connect the scattering operators to stan-
[27] J.M. Fink, M. Göppl, M. Baur, R. Bianchetti, P.J. Leek, dard input-output operators that fulfill the input-output
A. Blais, and A. Wallraff, Nature 454, 315 (2008). relations,
[28] Yong Hu, Guo-Qin Ge, Shi Chen, Xiao-Fei Yang, You- r
Ling Chen, Phys. Rev. A 84, 012329 (2011) 2
[29] H. Zoubi and H. Ritsch, Europhys. Lett. 90, 23001 (2010) aout (t) = ain (t) − i σ− (t), (13)
[30] H. S. Ku, F. Mallet, L. R. Vale, K. D. Irwin, S. E. Russek,
τ
G. C. Hilton, and K. W. Lehnert, IEEE Transactions on where ain (t) and aout (t) are any even mode input/output
Applied Superconductivity 21, 452 (2011)
operators, defined by
1
Z
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL ain/out (t) ≡ √ dωe−iω(t−t0/1 ) a0/1 (ω). (14)
2π
Scattering theory and input-output relations Here, the operator a0/1 (ω) plays the role of an initial
value in the Heisenberg picture,
In this work we calculate the output states of our de-
vice for given input states by making use of a combination a0/1 (ω) = eiHt0/1 a(ω)e−iHt0/1 (15)
of scattering theory and the input-output formalism. In
this approach, output and input states are connected via The corresponding input and output scattering operators
the scattering matrix (S-matrix), for even modes are defined as in equation (9),
|Ψout i = S|Ψin i (7) ain/out (ω) = lim eiHt0 e−iHT t0 a(ω)eiHT t0 e−iHt0 (16)
t0 →∓∞
The S-matrix elements in turn can be written in terms = lim eiωt0 eiHt0 a(ω)e−iHt0 ,
of scattering operators [18]. For example for the process t0 →∓∞
6
Coupled Transmons
where E J = EJ + EJm and the coupling Hamiltonian,
Cm
H12 = 8EC n1 n2 (23)
The Lagrangian describing the two transmons that are C + Cg + Cm
mutually coupled via a SQUID and each couple to a − EJm [(cos φ1 − 1)(cos φ2 − 1) + sin φ1 sin φ2 ]
7
We describe the transmons in the approved approxima- Here we have applied a rotating wave approximation and
tion with anharmonic oscillators [12] and introduce rais- made use of the fact that our initial states only contain
ing and lowering operators a†i and ai via one photon per transmission line which allows us to ne-
glect terms of the form a1 a1 a†2 a†2 + H.c.. Since the dy-
1 namics of our system is, for the initial state we consider,
i EJ 4
ni = (ai − a†i ) (24) restricted to the subspace of at most one excitation per
2 2EC
1 transmon respectively transmission line we can write our
2EC 4 Hamiltonian in terms of Pauli matrices,
φi = (ai + a†i ) (25)
EJ
Keeping only the leading nonlinear terms we thus find, H 2×2 = Hsys + Hg2×2 (30)
EC † †
q
Hi ≈ 8EC E J a†i ai − a a ai ai (26)
2 i i wherepHsys is as in equation (1) of the main text with
We are interested in a scenario where tunneling of exci- ω = 8EC E J + δω, where δω accumulates all minor
tations from one transmon to the other is strongly sup- renormalizations of the transmon frequencies due to the
pressed. The leading tunneling terms are found by ex- nonlinear terms of the cosine potentials and
panding the coupling Hamiltonian H12 to linear order in
a1 and a2 . With a rotating wave approximation we find,
Cm
J= EC . (31)
Cm 2(C + Cm + Cg )
8EC n1 n2 − EJm φ1 φ2 ≈ (27) Since Cm /(C + Cg + Cm ) 1 we find the upper limit,
C + Cg + Cm
s
2EC Cm
≈ EJ − EJm (a1 a†2 + a†1 a2 ) 1
EJ C + C g + C m J< EC , (32)
10
These terms vanish if one chooses the external fluxes that
control the values of EJ and EJm such that, for the strength of the qubit-qubit interaction. In turn
EJm Cm the couplings to the transmission lines read,
= (28)
EJ + EJm C + Cm + Cg
14 X
The rotating wave approximation applied for deriving EJ
Hg2×2 = 4iEC ng,j (σj+ − σj− ),
equation (27) furthermore requires that EJm < 2EJ /3. 2EC j=1,2
The desired density-density interaction is contained in
the nonlocal cosine interaction terms,
which become identical to equation (2) after applying a
EJm 2 2 EJm
HJ = − φ1 φ2 ≈ −2EC a† a1 a†2 a2 (29) rotating wave approximation.
4 EJ + EJm 1