Near-ultrastrong nonlinear light-matter coupling in superconducting circuits
Yufeng Ye, Jeremy B. Kline, Alec Yen, Gregory Cunningham, Max Tan, Alicia Zang, Michael Gingras, Bethany M. Niedzielski, Hannah Stickler, Kyle Serniak, Mollie E. Schwartz, Kevin P. O’Brien · Nature Communications · 2025
Light-matter interaction between an atom and an electromagnetic resonator is ubiquitous in quantum technologies. Although linear light-matter coupling $$g{\hat{\sigma }}_{x}(\hat{a}+{\hat{a}}^{{{\dagger}} })$$ can reach the ultrastrong regime g/ω > 10−1, nonlinear light-matter coupling $$\frac{\chi }{2}{\hat{\sigma }}_{z}{\hat{a}}^{{{\dagger}} }\hat{a}$$ is typically perturbative and limited to χ/ω < 10−2. Nonlinear coupling has the advantage of commuting with the atomic $${\hat{\sigma }}_{z}$$ and photonic $${\hat{a}}^{{{\dagger}} }\hat{a}$$ Hamiltonian, allowing for fundamental operations such as quantum-non-demolition measurement. Here, we use a superconducting circuit to demonstrate the experimental realization of near-ultrastrong χ/ω = (4.852 ± 0.006) × 10−2. We also show signatures of light-light nonlinear coupling ( $$\chi {\hat{a}}^{{{\dagger}} }\hat{a}{\hat{b}}^{{{\dagger}} }\hat{b}$$ ) and χ/2π = 580.3 ± 0.4 MHz matter-matter nonlinear coupling ( $$\frac{\chi }{4}{\hat{\sigma }}_{z,a}{\hat{\sigma }}_{z,b}$$ ), representing the largest reported ZZ interaction between two coherent qubits. Such advances in the nonlinear coupling strength of light, matter modes enable new physical regimes and could lead to orders of magnitude faster qubit readout and gates. Nonlinear light-matter coupling has applications in quantum technologies, for instance in quantum-non-demolition measurements, but its strength is typically limited. Here the authors demonstrate near-ultrastrong nonlinear light-matter coupling in a superconducting circuit with two transmons and a quarton coupler.