Quantum non-demolition detection of an itinerant microwave photon

• Published in: Nature physics Vol. 14; no. 6; pp. 546 - 549
• Main Authors: Kono, S., Koshino, K., Tabuchi, Y., Noguchi, A., Nakamura, Y.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group 01.06.2018
• Subjects: Electromagnetic radiation; Flight; Microwaves; Optics; Quantum efficiency; Quantum entanglement; Quantum nondemolition; Quantum optics; Quantum theory; Qubits (quantum computing); Superconductivity
• ISSN: 1745-2473; 1745-2481
• DOI: 10.1038/s41567-018-0066-3

Photon detectors are an elementary tool to measure electromagnetic waves at the quantum limit1,2 and are heavily demanded in the emerging quantum technologies such as communication3, sensing4 and computing5. Of particular interest is a quantum non-demolition (QND)-type detector, which projects an electromagnetic wave onto the photon-number basis6–10. This is in stark contrast to conventional photon detectors2 that absorb a photon to trigger a ‘click’. The long-sought QND detection of a flying photon was recently demonstrated in the optical domain using a single atom in a cavity11,12. However, the counterpart for microwaves has been elusive despite the recent progress in microwave quantum optics using superconducting circuits13–19. Here, we implement a deterministic entangling gate between a superconducting qubit and an itinerant microwave photon reflected by a cavity containing the qubit. Using the entanglement and the high-fidelity qubit readout, we demonstrate a QND detection of a single photon with the quantum efficiency of 0.84 and the photon survival probability of 0.87. Our scheme can serve as a building block for quantum networks connecting distant qubit modules as well as a microwave-photon-counting device for multiple-photon signals.