MIT News February 9, 2023
Squeezing of the electromagnetic vacuum is an essential metrological technique used to reduce quantum noise in applications spanning gravitational wave detection, biological microscopy and quantum information science. In superconducting circuits, the resonator-based Josephson-junction parametric amplifiers conventionally used to generate squeezed microwaves are constrained by a narrow bandwidth and low dynamic range. An international team of researchers (USA – MIT, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, industry, Australia) developed a dual-pump, broadband Josephson travelling-wave parametric amplifier that combined a phase-sensitive extinction ratio of 56 dB with single-mode squeezing on par with the best resonator-based squeezers. They demonstrated two-mode squeezing at microwave frequencies with bandwidth in the gigahertz range that is almost two orders of magnitude wider than that of contemporary resonator-based squeezers. According to the researchers their amplifier is capable of simultaneously creating entangled microwave photon pairs with large frequency separation, with potential applications including high-fidelity qubit readout, quantum illumination and teleportation… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Amplification characteristics. Credit: Nature Physics (2023)Â