CAREER: Engineering Interacting Photons in Superconducting-Circuit Lattices

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Photons are particles of light which exist all across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio and microwaves to visible and ultra-violet light. By making use of superconductors, which carry current without generating heat when cooled to very low temperatures, it is possible to make microwave circuits where, unlike in most room-temperature devices, the photons live for very long times and stay confined in small regions in space. Since these photons stay put instead of flying away, they become more like conventional particles such as electrons, and the full might and diversity of microwave engineering can be used to control how they see and interact with the world. By controlling how these photons interact with each other and the world around them, this project will probe the fundamental building blocks of the materials around us and learn about how the environment in which a particle lives affects its properties. The project will also build upon the recently-initiated Virtual AMO Seminar, of which the PI is a board member, to develop an auxiliary small-group program series aimed at engaging non-physicists and undergraduate students in online research seminars in a meaningful way and facilitating communication in the ever-broadening quantum workforce.Among this project’s specific research goals is to harness arrays of superconducting microwave resonators to produce microwave metamaterials in which photon-photon interactions can be mediated by superconducting qubits. Building on previous theoretical work showing that these metamaterials can access unconventional band structures, such as lattices with gapped flat bands and also much more general mathematical objects such as tree-like and hyperbolic graphs, the PI will implement unconventional microwave lattices and incorporate qubits to mediate interactions. Investigation will begin with one-dimensional lattices and move toward higher-dimensional structures during the course of the project.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.