title: Controllable microwave three-wave mixing via a single three-level superconducting quantum circuit.
abstract: Three-wave mixing in second-order nonlinear optical processes cannot occur in atomic systems due to the electric-dipole selection rules. In contrast, we demonstrate that second-order nonlinear processes can occur in a superconducting quantum circuit (i.e., a superconducting artificial atom) when the inversion symmetry of the potential energy is broken by simply changing the applied magnetic flux. In particular, we show that difference- and sum-frequencies (and second harmonics) can be generated in the microwave regime in a controllable manner by using a single three-level superconducting flux quantum circuit (SFQC). For our proposed parameters, the frequency tunability of this circuit can be achieved in the range of about 17 GHz for the sum-frequency generation, and around 42 GHz (or 26 GHz) for the difference-frequency generation. Our proposal provides a simple method to generate second-order nonlinear processes within current experimental parameters of SFQCs.
authors.affiliation: 1] Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China [2] Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology (TNList), Beijing 100084, China [3] CEMS, RIKEN, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
authors.forename: Yu-xi
authors.initials: YX
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: 1] Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China [2] CEMS, RIKEN, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
authors.forename: Hui-Chen
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: CEMS, RIKEN, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
authors.forename: Z H
authors.initials: ZH
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.affiliation: 1] CEMS, RIKEN, Saitama 351-0198, Japan [2] Faculty of Physics, Adam Mickiewicz University, 61-614 Poznań, Poland.
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Miranowicz
authors.affiliation: 1] CEMS, RIKEN, Saitama 351-0198, Japan [2] NEC Green Innovation Research Laboratories, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8501, Japan.
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Tsai
authors.affiliation: 1] CEMS, RIKEN, Saitama 351-0198, Japan [2] Physics Department, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1040, USA.
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Nori