Abstract
Spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) has been a key enabling technology in exploring quantum phenomena and their applications for decades. For instance, traditional SPDC, which splits a high-energy pump photon into two lower-energy photons, is a common way to produce entangled photon pairs. Since the early realizations of SPDC, researchers have thought to generalize it to higher order, e.g., to produce entangled photon triplets. However, directly generating photon triplets through a single SPDC process has remained elusive. Here, using a flux-pumped superconducting parametric cavity, we demonstrate direct three-photon SPDC, with photon triplets generated in a single cavity mode or split between multiple modes. With strong pumping, the states can be quite bright, with flux densities exceeding 60 photons per second per hertz. The observed states are strongly non-Gaussian, which has important implications for potential applications. In the single-mode case, we observe a triangular star-shaped distribution of quadrature voltages, indicative of the long-predicted “star state.” The observed state shows strong third-order correlations, as expected for a state generated by a cubic Hamiltonian. By pumping at the sum frequency of multiple modes, we observe strong three-body correlations between multiple modes, strikingly, in the absence of second-order correlations. We further analyze the third-order correlations under mode transformations by the symplectic symmetry group, showing that the observed transformation properties serve to “fingerprint” the specific cubic Hamiltonian that generates them. The observed non-Gaussian, third-order correlations represent an important step forward in quantum optics and may have a strong impact on quantum communication with microwave fields as well as continuous-variable quantum computation.
2 More- Received 17 July 2019
- Revised 17 October 2019
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.011011
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Popular Summary
For over 30 years, spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) has been a workhorse for quantum optics. By splitting one “pump photon” into two daughter photons, SPDC has had a crucial role in fundamental tests of quantum theory as well as many applications in quantum information processing. From the early days, researchers have explored splitting the pump photon into three photons (as a possible resource in quantum computation, for example), but it has proven extremely difficult to realize experimentally—until now. Here, we report on an implementation of three-photon SPDC in the microwave domain.
To split one microwave photon into three daughter photons, we use a flux-pumped, superconducting parametric resonator. Our triplet source is bright, producing a propagating photon flux comparable to ordinary two-photon SPDC. We clearly see strong three-photon correlations in the output photons, even in the absence of normal two-photon correlations. The symmetry properties of these correlations allow us to “fingerprint” how the photons were created, clearly demonstrating little contamination from typical SPDC processes.
These results form the basis of an exciting new paradigm of three-photon quantum optics. One can only hope that this new paradigm will be as successful as two-photon quantum optics.