Tunable quantum beam splitters for coherent manipulation of a solid-state tripartite qubit system

Abstract

Coherent control of quantum states is at the heart of implementing solid-state quantum processors and testing quantum mechanics at the macroscopic level. Despite significant progress made in recent years in controlling single- and bi-partite quantum systems, coherent control of quantum wave function in multipartite systems involving artificial solid-state qubits has been hampered due to the relatively short decoherence time and lack of precise control methods. Here we report the creation and coherent manipulation of quantum states in a tripartite quantum system, which is formed by a superconducting qubit coupled to two microscopic two-level systems (TLSs). The avoided crossings in the system's energy-level spectrum due to the qubit - TLS interaction act as tunable quantum beam splitters of wave functions. Our result shows that the Landau - Zener - Stückelberg interference has great potential in precise control of the quantum states in the tripartite system. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.