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On-demand directional microwave photon emission using waveguide quantum electrodynamics

Nature Physics volume 19, pages 394–400 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Routing quantum information between non-local computational nodes is a foundation for extensible networks of quantum processors. Quantum information transfer between arbitrary nodes is generally mediated either by photons that propagate between them or by resonantly coupling nearby nodes. The utility is determined by the type of emitter, propagation channel and receiver. Conventional approaches involving propagating microwave photons have limited fidelity due to photon loss and are often unidirectional, whereas architectures that use direct resonant coupling are bidirectional in principle but can generally accommodate only a few local nodes. Here we demonstrate high-fidelity, on-demand, directional, microwave photon emission. We do this using an artificial molecule comprising two superconducting qubits strongly coupled to a bidirectional waveguide, effectively creating a chiral microwave waveguide. Quantum interference between the photon emission pathways from the molecule generates single photons that selectively propagate in a chosen direction. This circuit will also be capable of photon absorption, making it suitable for building interconnects within extensible quantum networks.

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Fig. 1: Directional emission in a waveguide QED architecture.
Fig. 2: Verifying protocol conditions via elastic scattering.
Fig. 3: Pulse sequence and time-domain measurements.
Fig. 4: Photon state tomography.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The code used for numerical simulations and data analyses is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge D. Campbell for his contributions to the infrastructures used in this experiment, and D. K. Kim for assisting with device fabrication. This research was funded in part by the AWS Center for Quantum Computing, US Army Research Office grant no. W911NF-18-1-0411, the DOE Office of Science National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA) under contract no. DE-SC0012704 and the Department of Defense under Air Force contract no. FA8702-15-D-0001. B.K. gratefully acknowledges support from the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship programme. A.A. gratefully acknowledges support from the P.D. Soros Fellowship programme. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements of the US Government.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Bharath Kannan and Aziza Almanakly.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Bharath Kannan, Aziza Almanakly, Youngkyu Sung, Agustin Di Paolo, David A. Rower, Jochen Braumüller, Amir Karamlou, Antti Vepsäläinen, Roni Winik, Joel I-Jan Wang, Terry P. Orlando, Simon Gustavsson, Jeffrey A. Grover & William D. Oliver

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Bharath Kannan, Aziza Almanakly, Youngkyu Sung, Amir Karamlou, Terry P. Orlando & William D. Oliver

  3. Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    David A. Rower & William D. Oliver

  4. MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA, USA

    Alexander Melville, Bethany M. Niedzielski, Kyle Serniak, Mollie E. Schwartz, Jonilyn L. Yoder & William D. Oliver

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Contributions

B.K. designed the experiment procedure. B.K. and A.A. designed the devices, conducted the measurements, analysed the data and wrote the manuscript. A.D.P. provided theory support. A.M. and B.M.N. performed sample fabrication. Y.S., D.A.R., K.S. and J.I-J.W. assisted with the experimental set-up. R.W. developed the custom FPGA code used to obtain the data. J.B., A.K. and A.V. assisted with the automation of the device calibration. M.E.S., J.L.Y., T.P.O., S.G., J.A.G. and W.D.O. supervised the project. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Bharath Kannan.

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Kannan, B., Almanakly, A., Sung, Y. et al. On-demand directional microwave photon emission using waveguide quantum electrodynamics. Nat. Phys. 19, 394–400 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01869-5

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