Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Single photon detection is a key resource for sensing at the quantum limit and the enabling technology for measurement-based quantum computing.Photon detection at optical frequencies relies on irreversible photoassisted ionization of various natural materials.However, microwave photons have energies 5 orders of magnitude lower than optical photons, and are therefore ineffective at triggering measurable phenomena at macroscopic scales.Here, we report the observation of a new type of interaction between a single twolevel system (qubit) and a microwave resonator.These two quantum systems do not interact coherently; instead, they share a common dissipative mechanism to a cold bath: the qubit irreversibly switches to its excited state if and only if a photon enters the resonator.We have used this highly correlated dissipation mechanism to detect itinerant photons impinging on the resonator.This scheme does not require any prior knowledge of the photon waveform nor its arrival time, and dominant decoherence mechanisms do not trigger spurious detection events (dark counts).We demonstrate a detection efficiency of 58% and a record low dark count rate of 1.4 per millisecond.This work establishes engineered nonlinear dissipation as a key enabling resource for a new class of low-noise nonlinear microwave detectors.
Source: Physical Review X
Institutions: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, École Normale Supérieure - PSL, Sorbonne Université, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Laboratoire de Physique de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure, Université Paris Diderot, QUANTIC: QUANTum Information Circuits, Collège de France, Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives, Université Paris-Saclay, CEA Paris-Saclay - Etablissement de Saclay, CEA Paris-Saclay, Centre Automatique et Systèmes, École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $4,200
Awards: ENS- International Center for Fundamental Physics and its interfaces, Paris Sciences et Lettres, very low DARKcount single microWAve photon DetectOR, G3010527862, Engineering multi-photon dissipation in superconducting circuits for quantum error correction, G3953683450, G4190806336, G434337789, G471331628, G6759105742, G7240651115, G7307806049, Quantum Nanomechanical Transducer, G782245399, OMT - Optomechanical Technologies, Quantum-enhanced Sensing via Quantum Control
OpenAlex ID: W3103582644