In superconducting quantum information, machined aluminum superconducting cavities have proven to be a well-controlled, low-dissipation electromagnetic environment for quantum circuits such as qubits. They can possess large internal quality factors,
$Q_{int}>10^8$, and present the possibility of storing quantum information for times far exceeding those of microfabricated circuits. However, in order to be useful as a storage element, these cavities require a fast read/write mechanism--- in other words, they require tunable coupling between other systems of interest such as other cavity modes and qubits, as well as any associated readout hardware. In this work, we demonstrate these qualities in a simple dual cavity architecture in which a low-Q readout mode is parametrically coupled to a high-Q storage mode, allowing us to store and retrieve classical information. Specifically, we employ a flux-driven Josephson junction-based coupling scheme to controllably swap coherent states between two cavities, demonstrating full, sequenced control over the coupling rates between modes.
We have measured the persistent current in individual normal metal rings over a wide range of magnetic fields. From this data, we extract the first six cumulants of the single-ring persistent current distribution. Our results are consistent with the
theoretical prediction that this distribution should be nearly Gaussian (i.e., that these cumulants should be nearly zero) for diffusive metallic rings. This measurement highlights the particular sensitivity of persistent current to the mesoscopic fluctuations within a single coherent volume.
We perform state tomography of an itinerant squeezed state of the microwave field prepared by a Josephson parametric amplifier (JPA). We use a second JPA as a pre-amplifier to improve the quantum efficiency of the field quadrature measurement (QM) fr
om 2% to 36 +/- 4%. Without correcting for the detection inefficiency we observe a minimum quadrature variance which is 69 +/- 8% of the variance of the vacuum. We reconstruct the states density matrix by a maximum likelihood method and infer that the squeezed state has a minimum variance less than 40% of the vacuum, with uncertainty mostly caused by calibration systematics.
Nanomechanical oscillators are at the heart of ultrasensitive detectors of force, mass and motion. As these detectors progress to even better sensitivity, they will encounter measurement limits imposed by the laws of quantum mechanics. For example, i
f the imprecision of a measurement of an oscillators position is pushed below the standard quantum limit (SQL), quantum mechanics demands that the motion of the oscillator be perturbed by an amount larger than the SQL. Minimizing this quantum backaction noise and nonfundamental, or technical, noise requires an information efficient measurement. Here we integrate a microwave cavity optomechanical system and a nearly noiseless amplifier into an interferometer to achieve an imprecision below the SQL. As the microwave interferometer is naturally operated at cryogenic temperatures, the thermal motion of the oscillator is minimized, yielding an excellent force detector with a sensitivity of 0.51 aN/rt(Hz). In addition, the demonstrated efficient measurement is a critical step towards entangling mechanical oscillators with other quantum systems.
It has recently become possible to encode the quantum state of superconducting qubits and the position of nanomechanical oscillators into the states of microwave fields. However, to make an ideal measurement of the state of a qubit, or to detect the
position of a mechanical oscillator with quantum-limited sensitivity requires an amplifier that adds no noise. If an amplifier adds less than half a quantum of noise, it can also squeeze the quantum noise of the electromagnetic vacuum. Highly squeezed states of the vacuum serve as an important quantum information resource. They can be used to generate entanglement or to realize back-action-evading measurements of position. Here we introduce a general purpose parametric device, which operates in a frequency band between 4 and 8 GHz. It is a subquantum-limited microwave amplifier, it amplifies quantum noise above the added noise of commercial amplifiers, and it squeezes quantum fluctuations by 10 dB.
We create a Josephson parametric amplifier from a transmission line resonator whose inner conductor is made from a series SQUID array. By changing the magnetic flux through the SQUID loops, we are able to adjust the circuits resonance frequency and,
consenquently, the center of the amplified band, between 4 and 7.8 GHz. We observe that the amplifier has gains as large as 28 dB and infer that it adds less than twice the input vacuum noise.
