Time-reversal-symmetry breaking in circuit-QED-based photon lattices

By Jens Koch, Andrew A. Houck, Karyn Le Hur, Steven Girvin. 2010

304 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Breaking time-reversal symmetry is a prerequisite for accessing certain interesting many-body states such as fractional quantum Hall states. For polaritons, charge neutrality prevents magnetic fields from providing a direct symmetry-breaking mechanism and, similar to the situation in ultracold atomic gases, an effective magnetic field has to be synthesized. We show that in the circuit-QED architecture, this can be achieved by inserting simple superconducting circuits into the resonator junctions. In the presence of such coupling elements, constant parallel magnetic and electric fields suffice to break time-reversal symmetry. We support these theoretical predictions with numerical simulations for realistic sample parameters, specify general conditions under which time reversal is broken, and discuss the application to chiral Fock-state transfer, an on-chip circulator, and tunable band structure for the Kagome lattice.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/585b7cbc60fd5f27f4b5436a55662fd82a8ccd8a

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Citations in the corpus

Topological photonics (2018, background): “Another proposal to realize a synthetic magnetic field in a circuit-QED architecture by means of passive circulator elements was proposed by Koch et al. (2010): the circulators mediating the tunnel coupling between resonators are designed to break time-reversal symmetry and can be implemented with…”
Driven-dissipative preparation of entangled states in cascaded quantum-optical networks (2011, background): “While such a scenario is reminiscent of edge modes in quantum Hall systems [24, 25, 26, 27, 28], various artificial and more controlled realizations based on (integrated) non-reciprocal devices for optical [29, 30] and microwave [31, 32] photons are currently developed.”
Quantum simulation with interacting photons (2016, methodology): “nators that each interact with a superconducting qubit such that individual lattice sites can be described by a Jaynes– Cummings model has been investigated by Koch et al [120, 147].”
Topological Phases of Sound and Light (2014, background): “Both band gaps close simultaneously for special values of the flux where time-reversal symmetry is unbroken [16].”
Roadmap on topological photonics (2022, unknown): “Considerable technological challenges persist in settings that involve active and dissipative media [36, 58] and work towards quantum-limited operation [59], where lifetime broadening and noise constitute particular roadblocks to realize genuinely robust topological bandstructure phenomena.”
Quantum Simulation (2013, background): “Time-symmetry breaking Superconducting circuits (Koch et al., 2010)”
Continuous mode cooling and phonon routers for phononic quantum networks (2012, background): “Previously, such a setting was described for superconducting microwave cavities, where the effective magnetic field can be engineered using superconducting qubits and external fluxes [44, 45].”
Low-Disorder Microwave Cavity Lattices for Quantum Simulation with Photons (2012, methodology): “For the honeycomb geometry shown here the effect of frustrated coupling is the destructive interference of fields outside the inner hexagon, and can result in localized modes within the hexagons [80, 59, 77].”