Manipulating Fock states of a harmonic oscillator while preserving its linearity

Abstract

We present a new scheme for controlling the quantum state of a harmonic oscillator by coupling it to an anharmonic multilevel system (MLS) with first to second excited state transition frequency on-resonance with the oscillator. In this scheme that we call "ef-resonant", the spurious oscillator Kerr non-linearity inherited from the MLS is very small, while its Fock states can still be selectively addressed via an MLS transition at a frequency that depends on the number of photons. We implement this concept in a circuit-QED setup with a microwave 3D cavity (the oscillator, with frequency 6.4 GHz and quality factor QO=2E-6) embedding a frequency tunable transmon qubit (the MLS). We characterize the system spectroscopically and demonstrate selective addressing of Fock states and a Kerr non-linearity below 350 Hz. At times much longer than the transmon coherence times, a non-linear cavity response with driving power is also observed and explained.