Parametrically enhanced interactions and nonreciprocal bath dynamics in a photon-pressure Kerr amplifier.

Photon-pressure coupling between two superconducting circuits is a promising platform for investigating radiation-pressure coupling in distinct parameter regimes and for the development of radio-frequency (RF) quantum photonics and quantum-limited RF sensing. Here, we implement photon-pressure coupling between two superconducting circuits, one of which can be operated as a parametric amplifier. We demonstrate a Kerr-based enhancement of the photon-pressure single-photon coupling rate and an increase of the cooperativity by one order of magnitude in the amplifier regime. In addition, we observe that the intracavity amplification reduces the measurement imprecision of RF signal detection. Last, we demonstrate that RF mode sideband cooling is unexpectedly not limited to the effective amplifier mode temperature arising from quantum noise amplification, which we interpret in the context of nonreciprocal heat transfer between the two circuits. Our results demonstrate how Kerr amplification can be used as resource for enhanced photon-pressure systems and Kerr cavity optomechanics.

Cooling photon-pressure circuits into the quantum regime.

Quantum control of electromagnetic fields was initially established in the optical domain and has been advanced to lower frequencies in the gigahertz range during the past decades extending quantum photonics to broader frequency regimes. In standard cryogenic systems, however, thermal decoherence prevents access to the quantum regime for photon frequencies below the gigahertz domain. Here, we engineer two superconducting LC circuits coupled by a photon-pressure interaction and demonstrate sideband cooling of a hot radio frequency (RF) circuit using a microwave cavity. Because of a substantially increased coupling strength, we obtain a large single-photon quantum cooperativity 𝒞q0 ∼ 1 and reduce the thermal RF occupancy by 75% with less than one pump photon. For larger pump powers, the coupling rate exceeds the RF thermal decoherence rate by a factor of 3, and the RF circuit is cooled into the quantum ground state. Our results lay the foundation for RF quantum photonics.