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Updated: Jan 17, 2026

A Photonic System for Generating Unconditional Polarization-Entangled Photons Based on Multiple Quantum Interference
Published on: September 5, 2019
Spectral signature of high-order photon processes enhanced by Cooper-pair pairing
W C Smith1,2, A Borgognoni3, M Villiers3
1Laboratoire de Physique de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure, ENS-PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité, Centre Automatique et Systèmes, Mines Paris, Université PSL, Inria, Paris, France. smithclarke@google.com.
None:
Inducing interactions between individual photons is key for photonic quantum information and studying many-body photon states. Superconducting circuits are well suited to combine strong interactions with low losses. Typically, microwave photons are stored in an LC oscillator shunted by a Josephson junction, where the zero-point phase fluctuations across the junction determine the strength and order of photon interactions. Most superconducting nonlinear oscillators operate with small phase fluctuations, where two-photon Kerr interactions dominate. In our experiment, we shunt a high-impedance LC oscillator with a dipole element favoring the tunneling of paired Cooper pairs. This leads to large phase fluctuations of 3.4, accessing a regime where transition frequencies shift non-monotonically with excitation number. From spectroscopy, we extract two-, three-, and four-photon interaction energies, all of similar strength and exceeding the photon loss rate. Our results open a new regime of high-order photon interactions in microwave quantum optics.
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