Bistability and Critical Slowing Down in Superconducting Circuits

ORAL

Abstract

We carry out an experimental and numerical examination of bistability and critical slowing down in the strongly driven non-linear regime of circuit QED. The system under study is a 3D microwave cavity coupled to a transmon qubit. By measuring the response of the cavity to a step function drive pulse, we see that in the bistable regime the time required for the system to reach equilibrium is far longer than both the cavity and qubit relaxation times. We observe that this equilibration time saturates at high drive powers. Through careful modelling we are able to attribute this saturation to phase noise of the transmon. In addition we demonstrate that the equilibration time is highly sensitive to the temperature of the cavity.

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Presenters

  • Paul Brookes

    University College London

Authors

  • Paul Brookes

    University College London

  • Giovanna Tancredi

    Chalmers University of Technology

  • Themis Mavrogordatos

    Stockholm University

  • Andrew D Patterson

    Condensed Matter Physics, University of Oxford, University of Oxford

  • Joseph Rahamim

    Condensed Matter Physics, University of Oxford, University of Oxford

  • Martina Esposito

    Condensed Matter Physics, University of Oxford, University of Oxford

  • Peter Leek

    Condensed Matter Physics, University of Oxford, University of Oxford

  • Eran Ginossar

    Advanced Technology Institute, University of Surrey, University of Surrey, Advanced Technology Institute and Department of Physics, University of Surrey

  • Marzena Hanna Szymanska

    University College London, Physics and Astronomy, University College London