Magnons at low excitations: Observation of incoherent coupling to a bath of two-level systems

Collective magnetic excitation modes, magnons, can be coherently coupled to microwave photons in the single excitation limit. This allows for access to quantum properties of magnons and opens up a range of applications in quantum information processing, with the intrinsic magnon linewidth representing the coherence time of a quantum resonator. Our measurement system consists of a yttrium iron garnet (YIG) sphere and a three-dimensional (3D) microwave cavity at temperatures and excitation powers typical for superconducting quantum circuit experiments. We perform spectroscopic measurements to determine the limiting factor of magnon coherence at these experimental conditions. Using the input-o…

Analog quantum simulation of the Rabi model in the ultra-strong coupling regime

The quantum Rabi model describes the fundamental mechanism of light-matter interaction. It consists of a two-level atom or qubit coupled to a quantized harmonic mode via a transversal interaction. In the weak coupling regime, it reduces to the well-known Jaynes–Cummings model by applying a rotating wave approximation. The rotating wave approximation breaks down in the ultra-strong coupling regime, where the effective coupling strength g is comparable to the energy ω of the bosonic mode, and remarkable features in the system dynamics are revealed. Here we demonstrate an analog quantum simulation of an effective quantum Rabi model in the ultra-strong coupling regime, achieving a relative coup…

Control of the coupling strength and linewidth of a cavity magnon-polariton

The full coherent control of hybridized systems such as strongly coupled cavity photon-magnon states is a crucial step to enable future information processing technologies. Thus, it is particularly interesting to engineer deliberate control mechanisms such as the full control of the coupling strength as a measure for coherent information exchange. In this work, we employ cavity resonator spectroscopy to demonstrate the complete control of the coupling strength of hybridized cavity photon-magnon states. For this, we use two driving microwave inputs which can be tuned at will. Here, only the first input couples directly to the cavity resonator photons, whilst the second tone exclusively acts …

Erratum: “Concentric transmon qubit featuring fast tunability and an anisotropic magnetic dipole moment” [Appl. Phys. Lett. 108, 032601 (2016)]

Introducing coherent time control to cavity magnon-polariton modes

By connecting light to magnetism, cavity-magnon-polaritons (CMPs) can build links from quantum computation to spintronics. As a consequence, CMP-based information processing devices have thrived over the last five years, but almost exclusively been investigated with single-tone spectroscopy. However, universal computing applications will require a dynamic control of the CMP on demand and within nanoseconds. In this work, we perform fast manipulations of the different CMP modes with independent but coherent pulses to the cavity and magnon system. We change the state of the CMP from the energy exchanging beat mode to its normal modes and further demonstrate two fundamental examples of coheren…

Complex temperature dependence of coupling and dissipation of cavity magnon polaritons from millikelvin to room temperature

Hybridized magnonic-photonic systems are key components for future information processing technologies such as storage, manipulation or conversion of data both in the classical (mostly at room temperature) and quantum (cryogenic) regime. In this work, we investigate a YIG sphere coupled strongly to a microwave cavity over the full temperature range from $290\,\mathrm{K}$ down to $30\,\mathrm{mK}$. The cavity-magnon polaritons are studied from the classical to the quantum regime where the thermal energy is less than one resonant microwave quanta, i.e. at temperatures below $1\,\mathrm{K}$. We compare the temperature dependence of the coupling strength $g_{\rm{eff}}(T)$, describing the streng…

Concentric transmon qubit featuring fast tunability and an anisotropic magnetic dipole moment

We present a planar qubit design based on a superconducting circuit that we call concentric transmon. While employing a straightforward fabrication process using Al evaporation and lift-off lithography, we observe qubit lifetimes and coherence times in the order of 10us. We systematically characterize loss channels such as incoherent dielectric loss, Purcell decay and radiative losses. The implementation of a gradiometric SQUID loop allows for a fast tuning of the qubit transition frequency and therefore for full tomographic control of the quantum circuit. Due to the large loop size, the presented qubit architecture features a strongly increased magnetic dipole moment as compared to convent…

Steering between level repulsion and attraction: broad tunability of two-port driven cavity magnon-polaritons

Abstract Cavity-magnon polaritons (CMPs) are the associated quasiparticles of the hybridization between cavity photons and magnons in a magnetic sample placed in a microwave resonator. In the strong coupling regime, where the macroscopic coupling strength exceeds the individual dissipation, there is a coherent exchange of information. This renders CMPs as promising candidates for future applications such as in information processing. Recent advances on the study of the CMP now allow not only for creation of CMPs on demand, but also for tuning of the coupling strength—this can be thought of as the enhancement or suppression of information exchange. Here, we go beyond standard single-port dri…

Emulating the one-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model by a double chain of qubits

The Jordan-Wigner transformation maps a one-dimensional spin-1/2 system onto a fermionic model without spin degree of freedom. A double chain of quantum bits with XX and ZZ couplings of neighboring qubits along and between the chains, respectively, can be mapped on a spin-full 1D Fermi-Hubbard model. The qubit system can thus be used to emulate the quantum properties of this model. We analyze physical implementations of such analog quantum simulators, including one based on transmon qubits, where the ZZ interaction arises due to an inductive coupling and the XX interaction due to a capacitive interaction. We propose protocols to gain confidence in the results of the simulation through measu…

Quantum simulation of the spin-boson model with a microwave circuit

We consider superconducting circuits for the purpose of simulating the spin-boson model. The spin-boson model consists of a single two-level system coupled to bosonic modes. In most cases, the model is considered in a limit where the bosonic modes are sufficiently dense to form a continuous spectral bath. A very well known case is the ohmic bath, where the density of states grows linearly with the frequency. In the limit of weak coupling or large temperature, this problem can be solved numerically. If the coupling is strong, the bosonic modes can become sufficiently excited to make a classical simulation impossible. Here, we discuss how a quantum simulation of this problem can be performed …

An argon ion beam milling process for native AlOx layers enabling coherent superconducting contacts

We present an argon ion beam milling process to remove the native oxide layer forming on aluminum thin films due to their exposure to atmosphere in between lithographic steps. Our cleaning process is readily integrable with conventional fabrication of Josephson junction quantum circuits. From measurements of the internal quality factors of superconducting microwave resonators with and without contacts, we place an upper bound on the residual resistance of an ion beam milled contact of 50$\,\mathrm{m}\Omega \cdot \mu \mathrm{m}^2$ at a frequency of 4.5 GHz. Resonators for which only $6\%$ of the total foot-print was exposed to the ion beam milling, in areas of low electric and high magnetic …

Local Sensing with the Multi-Level AC Stark Effect

Analyzing weak microwave signals in the GHz regime is a challenging task if the signal level is very low and the photon energy widely undefined. A superconducting qubit can detect signals in the low photon regime, but due to its discrete level structure, it is only sensitive to photons of certain energies. With a multi-level quantum system (qudit) in contrast, the unknown signal frequency and amplitude can be deduced from the higher level AC Stark shift. The measurement accuracy is given by the signal amplitude, its detuning from the discrete qudit energy level structure and the anharmonicity. We demonstrate an energy sensitivity in the order of $10^{-3}$ with a measurement range of more th…