Kerr reversal in Josephson meta-material and traveling wave parametric amplification

Abstract

Josephson meta-materials have recently emerged as very promising platform for superconducting quantum science and technologies. Their distinguishing potential resides in ability to engineer them at sub-wavelength scales, which allows complete control over wave dispersion and nonlinear interaction. In this article we report a versatile Josephson transmission line with strong third order nonlinearity which can be tuned from positive to negative values, and suppressed second order non linearity. As an initial implementation of this multipurpose meta-material, we operate it to demonstrate reversed Kerr phase-matching mechanism in traveling wave parametric amplification. Compared to previous state of the art phase matching approaches, this reversed Kerr phase matching avoids the presence of gaps in transmission, can reduce gain ripples, and allows in situ tunability of the amplification band over an unprecedented wide range. Besides such notable advancements in the amplification performance with direct applications to superconducting quantum computing and generation of broadband squeezing, the in-situ tunability with sign reversal of the nonlinearity in traveling wave structures, with no counterpart in optics to the best of our knowledge, opens exciting experimental possibilities in the general framework of microwave quantum optics, single-photon detection and quantum limited amplification.