Photon-Number Squeezing in Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics

A superconducting single-electron transistor (SSET) coupled to an anharmonic oscillator, e.g., a Josephson junction-L-C circuit, can drive the latter to a nonequilibrium photon number state. By biasing the SSET in a regime where the current is carried by a combination of inelastic quasiparticle tunneling and coherent Cooper-pair tunneling (Josephson quasiparticle cycle), cooling of the oscillator as well as a laser like enhancement of the photon number can be achieved. Here we show, that the cut-off in the quasiparticle tunneling rate due to the superconducting gap, in combination with the anharmonicity of the oscillator, may create strongly squeezed photon number distributions. For low dissipation in the oscillator nearly pure Fock states can be produced.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Wireless distance estimation with low-power standard components in wireless sensor nodes

In the context of increasing use of moving wireless sensor nodes the interest in localizing these nodes in their application environment is strongly rising. For many applications, it is necessary to know the exact position of the nodes in two- or three-dimensional space. Commonly used nodes use state-of-the-art transceivers like the CC430 from Texas Instruments with integrated signal strength measurement for this purpose. This has the disadvantage, that the signal strength measurement is strongly dependent on the orientation of the node through the antennas inhomogeneous radiation pattern as well as it has a small accuracy on long ranges. Also, the nodes overall attenuation and output power has to be calibrated and interference and multipath effects appear in closed environments. Another possibility to trilaterate the position of a sensor node is the time of flight measurement. This has the advantage, that the position can also be estimated on long ranges, where signal strength methods give only poor accuracy. In this paper we present an investigation of the suitability of the state-of-the-art transceiver CC430 for a system based on time of flight methods and give an overview of the optimal settings under various circumstances for the in-field application. For this investigation, the systematic and statistical errors in the time of flight measurements with the CC430 have been investigated under a multitude of parameters. Our basic system does not use any additional components but only the given standard hardware, which can be found on the Texas Instruments evaluation board for a CC430. Thus, it can be implemented on already existent sensor node networks by a simple software upgrade.Comment: 8 pages, Proceedings of the 14th Mechatronics Forum International Conference, Mechatronics 201

Preparation and manipulation of a fault-tolerant superconducting qubit

We describe a qubit encoded in continuous quantum variables of an rf superconducting quantum interference device. Since the number of accessible states in the system is infinite, we may protect its two-dimensional subspace from small errors introduced by the interaction with the environment and during manipulations. We show how to prepare the fault-tolerant state and manipulate the system. The discussed operations suffice to perform quantum computation on the encoded state, syndrome extraction, and quantum error correction. We also comment on the physical sources of errors and possible imperfections while manipulating the system.Comment: Typo corrected, title changed as suggested by the editors of Phys. Rev. B, references adde

Compensation of anisotropy effects in the generation of two-photon light

We analyse a method to compensate for anisotropy effects in the spatial distribution of parametric down-conversion (PDC) radiation in bulk crystals. In this method, a single nonlinear crystal is replaced by two consecutive crystals with opposite transverse walk-off directions. We implement a simple numerical model to calculate the spatial distribution of intensity and correlations, as well as the Schmidt mode structure, with an account for the anisotropy. Experimental results are presented which prove the validity of both the model and the method.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

A "fair sampling" perspective on an apparent violation of duality

In the event in which a quantum mechanical particle can pass from an initial state to a final state along two possible paths, the duality principle states that "the simultaneous observation of wave and particle behavior is prohibited". [M. O. Scully, B.-G. Englert, and H. Walther. Nature, 351:111-116, 1991.] emphasized the importance of additional degrees of freedom in the context of complementarity. In this paper, we show how the consequences of duality change when allowing for biased sampling, that is, postselected measurements on specific degrees of freedom of the environment of the two-path state. Our work contributes to the explanation of previous experimental apparent violations of duality [R. Menzel, D. Puhlmann, A. Heuer, and W. P. Schleich. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 109(24):9314-9319, 2012.] and opens up the way for novel experimental tests of duality.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Distillability via protocols respecting the positivity of partial transpose

We show that all quantum states that do not have a positive partial transpose are distillable via channels, which preserve the positivity of the partial transpose. The question whether NPT bound entanglement exist is therefore closely related to the connection between the set of separable superoperators and PPT-preserving maps.Comment: 3 pages, REVTeX, remark on complete positivity and reference adde