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Updated: Jan 16, 2026

Generation and Coherent Control of Pulsed Quantum Frequency Combs
Published on: June 8, 2018
Strong coupling between a single-photon and a two-photon Fock state
Shuai-Peng Wang1,2,3, Alberto Mercurio4,5, Alessandro Ridolfo6
1Beijing Key Laboratory of Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing, Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
The realization of strong nonlinear coupling between single photons has been a long-standing goal in quantum optics and quantum information science, promising wide impact applications, such as all-optical deterministic quantum logic and single-photon frequency conversion. Here, we report an experimental observation of the strong coupling between a single-photon and a two-photon Fock state in an ultrastrongly-coupled circuit-QED system. This strong nonlinear interaction is realized by introducing a detuned flux qubit working as an effective coupler between two modes of a superconducting coplanar waveguide resonator. The ultrastrong light-matter interaction breaks the excitation number conservation, and an external flux bias breaks the parity conservation. The combined effect of the two enables the strong one-two-photon coupling. Quantum Rabi-like avoided crossing is resolved when tuning the two-photon resonance frequency of the first mode across the single-photon resonance frequency of the second mode. Within this new photonic regime, we observe the thresholdless second harmonic generation for a mean photon number below one. Our results represent a key step towards a new regime of quantum nonlinear optics, where individual photons can deterministically and coherently interact with each other in the absence of any stimulating fields.
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