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Resolving photon number states in a superconducting circuit

Open access
Schuster, D. I., Houck, A. A., Schreier, J. A., Wallraff, A., Gambetta, J. M., Blais, A., Frunzio, L., Majer, J., Johnson, B., Devoret, M. H., Girvin, S. M., Schoelkopf, R. J.·2007·Nature

Abstract

Electromagnetic signals are always composed of photons, although in the circuit domain those signals are carried as voltages and currents on wires, and the discreteness of the photon's energy is usually not evident. However, by coupling a superconducting quantum bit (qubit) to signals on a microwave transmission line, it is possible to construct an integrated circuit in which the presence or absence of even a single photon can have a dramatic effect. Such a system can be described by circuit quantum electrodynamics (QED)—the circuit equivalent of cavity QED, where photons interact with atoms or quantum dots. Previously, circuit QED devices were shown to reach the resonant strong coupling regime, where a single qubit could absorb and re-emit a single photon many times. Here we report a circuit QED experiment in the strong dispersive limit, a new regime where a single photon has a large effect on the qubit without ever being absorbed. The hallmark of this strong dispersive regime is that the qubit transition energy can be resolved into a separate spectral line for each photon number state of the microwave field. The strength of each line is a measure of the probability of finding the corresponding photon number in the cavity. This effect is used to distinguish between coherent and thermal fields, and could be used to create a photon statistics analyser. As no photons are absorbed by this process, it should be possible to generate non-classical states of light by measurement and perform qubit–photon conditional logic, the basis of a logic bus for a quantum computer.

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Cites

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Research works printed but not linked: 27

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Metadata

Authors
Schuster, D. I., Houck, A. A., Schreier, J. A., Wallraff, A., Gambetta, J. M., Blais, A., Frunzio, L., Majer, J., Johnson, B., Devoret, M. H., Girvin, S. M., & Schoelkopf, R. J.
Venue
Nature
Published
2007-02
Volume
445
Issue
7127
Pages
515-518
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
OpenAlex
W2160661582
Cited by
850
References
3
FWCI
76.43
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green
Licence
www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Resolving photon number states in a superconducting circuit. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/nature05461
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Schuster, D. I., Houck, A. A., Schreier, J. A., Wallraff, A., Gambetta, J. M., Blais, A., Frunzio, L., Majer, J., Johnson, B., Devoret, M. H., Girvin, S. M., & Schoelkopf, R. J. (2007). Resolving photon number states in a superconducting circuit. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05461

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