Demonstration of a Single-Photon Router in the Microwave Regime

2011/03/09 by Io-Chun Hoi, I.-C. Hoi, C. M. Wilson +4 · 480 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Electromagnetically induced transparency #Microwave #Photon #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum computer #Quantum information #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Qubit #Scattering #Transmon #cond-mat.mes-hall #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.107.073601

published in Physical Review Letters 107(7), 073601 (American Physical Society) · 5 pages, 3 figures

arxiv created 2011/03/09 · openalex publication_date 2011/08/09 · arxiv updated 2012/01/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/09

Abstract

We have embedded an artificial atom, a superconducting transmon qubit, in an open transmission line and investigated the strong scattering of incident microwave photons (∼6 GHz). When an input coherent state, with an average photon number N≪1 is on resonance with the artificial atom, we observe extinction of up to 99.6% in the forward propagating field. We use two-tone spectroscopy to study scattering from excited states and we observe electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We then use EIT to make a single-photon router, where we can control to what output port an incoming signal is delivered. The maximum on-off ratio is around 99% with a rise and fall time on the order of nanoseconds, consistent with theoretical expectations. The router can easily be extended to have multiple output ports and it can be viewed as a rudimentary quantum node, an important step towards building quantum information networks.

Citations

• Charge insensitive qubit design derived from the Cooper pair box
• Demonstration of two-qubit algorithms with a superconducting quantum processor
• Climbing the Jaynes–Cummings ladder and observing its nonlinearity in a cavity QED system
• Direct Observation of Coherent Population Trapping in a Superconducting Artificial Atom
• Electromagnetically induced transparency: Optics in coherent media
• Efficient coupling of photons to a single molecule and the observation of its resonance fluorescence
• Strong Extinction of a Laser Beam by a Single Molecule

Cited by

• Driven-dissipative entanglement of distant giant atoms
• Input-output theory for waveguide QED with an ensemble of inhomogeneous atoms
• Measuring coherent dynamics of a superconducting qubit in an open waveguide

Related

• Microwave Quantum Optics with an Artificial Atom
• Basic cell for a quantum microwave router
• Deterministic loading and phase shaping of microwaves onto a single artificial atom
• Scattering of coherent states on a single artificial atom
• Bidirectional and tunable single-photons multi-channel quantum router between microwave and optical light