Deterministic nonlinear bunching of bosons

Abstract

The ability of bosonic energy quanta to bunch together in an energy-conserving interaction is a fundamental feature of quantum harmonic oscillators. Linear systems together with measurement allow for the conditional concentration of energy quanta and, subsequently, breeding of the quantum states, but only with an exponentially decreasing success rate. Deterministic, energy-conserving and unconditional bunching however, requires nonlinearity. We investigate which nonlinear energy-conserving interactions deterministically combine bosons into high number states at the same frequency. We show that in order to do so it is advantageous to use nonlinear interactions involving highly saturable systems, such as qubits, as they preserve the hierarchical quantum non-Gaussian features and are also sufficiently robust against pure loss. Nonlinear bunching therefore demonstrates the advantage of a {\it qubit-inside} nonlinearity and opens new directions in the deterministic preparation, processing, and detection of quantum non-Gaussian states.