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Measurement of the Decay of Fock States in a Superconducting Quantum Circuit

2008; American Physical Society; Volume: 101; Issue: 24 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.101.240401

1092-0145

H. Wang, M. Hofheinz, M. Ansmann, Radoslaw C. Bialczak, Erik Lucero, M. Neeley, A. D. O’Connell, D. Sank, J. Wenner, A. N. Cleland, John M. Martinis,

Quantum optics and atomic interactions

We demonstrate the controlled generation of Fock states with up to 15 photons in a microwave coplanar waveguide resonator coupled to a superconducting phase qubit. The subsequent decay of the Fock states, due to dissipation, is then monitored by varying the time delay between preparing the state and performing a number-state analysis. We find that the decay dynamics can be described by a master equation where the lifetime of the $n$-photon Fock state scales as $1/n$, in agreement with theory. We have also generated a coherent state in the microwave resonator, and monitored its decay process. We demonstrate that the coherent state maintains a Poisson distribution as it decays, with an average photon number that decreases with the same characteristic decay time as the one-photon Fock state.