Qubit initialization is a critical task in quantum computation and communication. Extensive efforts have been made to achieve this with high speed, efficiency and scalability. However, previous approaches have either been measurement-based and required fast feedback, suffered from crosstalk or required sophisticated calibration. Here, we report a fast and high-fidelity reset scheme, avoiding the issues above without any additional chip architecture. By modulating the flux through a transmon qubit, we realize a swap between the qubit and its readout resonator that suppresses the excited state population to 0.08% ± 0.08% within 34 ns (284 ns if photon depletion of the resonator is required). Furthermore, our approach (i) can achieve effective second excited state depletion, (ii) has negligible effects on neighboring qubits, and (iii) offers a way to entangle the qubit with an itinerant single photon, useful in quantum communication applications.

We revisit the analytic solution of the two-qubit quantum Rabi model with inhomogeneous coupling and transition frequencies using a displaced oscillator basis. This approach enables us to apply the same truncation rules and techniques adopted in the Rabi model to the two qubits system. The derived analytical spectra match perfectly with the numerical solutions in the parameter regime where the qubits' transition frequencies are far off-resonance with the field frequency and the interaction strengths reach the ultrastrong coupling regime. We further explore the dynamical behavior of the two qubits as well as the evolution of entanglement. The analytical methods provide unexpectedly accurate results in describing the dynamics of the two qubits in the present experimentally accessible coupling regime. The time evolutions of the probability for the qubits show that the collapse-revival phenomena emerge, survive and finally disappear when one coupling strength increases from weak to strong coupling regimes and the other coupling strength is well into the ultrastrong coupling regime. The inhomogeneous coupling system exhibits new dynamics, which are different from the homogeneous coupling case.

Based on the cavity magnomechanical system, which consists of a microwave cavity and a small ferromagnetic sphere, we propose a scheme to construct a parity-time (PT) symmetric-like system formed by the active magnon mode and passive cavity mode. The effective gain of the magnon mode is achieved by resonantly driving the yttrium iron garnet (YIG) sphere and can be modulated by the power of the driving field. We show the PT-symmetric phase transition following the variation of magnon-photon coupling strength in microwave regime. We find that the transmission amplitudes and time delays on the first-and second-order sidebands in the PT-symmetric-like system can be enhanced for three to four orders, compared to the magnomechanical system, once the magnon-photon coupling strength is tuned to the critical point in the broken-PT symmetry regime. Particularly, we also show the switching between different transmission spectra (amplification or magnomechanically induced absorption) and time delay (positive or negative) on the first-order Stokes sideband, can be achieved by modulating the power of the control field, cavity-waveguide coupling parameter and magnon-photon coupling strength. Our study shows that the cavity magnomechanical system is a promising platform for exploring PT-symmetric-like paradigms in microwave field, and a good candidate for the microwave control on both the first-and high-oder sidebands simultaneously. Our study may inspire further applications in frequency combs and low-power magnomechanical amplifier.

We study the geometric curvature and phase of the Rabi model. Under the rotating-wave approximation (RWA), we apply the gauge independent Berry curvature over a surface integral to calculate the Berry phase of the eigenstates for both single and two-qubit systems, which is found to be identical with the system of spin-1/2 particle in a magnetic field. We extend the idea to define a vacuum-induced geometric curvature when the system starts from an initial state with pure vacuum bosonic field. The induced geometric phase is related to the average photon number in a period which is possible to measure in the qubit-cavity system. We also calculate the geometric phase beyond the RWA and find an anomalous sudden change, which implies the breakdown of the adiabatic theorem and the Berry phases in an adiabatic cyclic evolution are ill-defined near the anti-crossing point in the spectrum.