Physical systems usually exhibit quantum behavior, such as superpositions and entanglement, only when they are sufficiently decoupled from a lossy environment. Paradoxically, a specially engineered interaction with the environment can become a resource for the generation and protection of quantum states. This notion can be generalized to the confinement of a system into a manifold of quantum states, consisting of all coherent superpositions of multiple stable steady states. We have confined the state of a superconducting resonator to the quantum manifold spanned by two coherent states of opposite phases and have observed a Schrödinger cat state spontaneously squeeze out of vacuum before decaying into a classical mixture. This experiment points toward robustly encoding quantum information in multidimensional steady-state manifolds.

Quantum superpositions of distinct coherent states in a single-mode harmonic oscillator, known as "cat states," have been an elegant demonstration of Schrödinger's famous cat paradox. Here, we realize a two-mode cat state of electromagnetic fields in two microwave cavities bridged by a superconducting artificial atom, which can also be viewed as an entangled pair of single-cavity cat states. We present full quantum state tomography of this complex cat state over a Hilbert space exceeding 100 dimensions via quantum nondemolition measurements of the joint photon number parity. The ability to manipulate such multicavity quantum states paves the way for logical operations between redundantly encoded qubits for fault-tolerant quantum computation and communication.

Quantum error-correction codes would protect an arbitrary state of a multi-qubit register against decoherence-induced errors 1 , but their implementation is an outstanding challenge for the development of large-scale quantum computers. A first step is to stabilize a nonequilibrium state of a simple quantum system such as a qubit or a cavity mode in the presence of decoherence. Several groups have recently accomplished this goal using measurementbased feedback schemes [2][3][4][5] . A next step is to prepare and stabilize a state of a composite system [6][7][8] . Here we demonstrate the stabilization of an entangled Bell state of a quantum register of two superconducting qubits for an arbitrary time. Our result is achieved by an autonomous feedback scheme which combines continuous drives along with a specifically engineered coupling between the two-qubit register and a dissipative reservoir. Similar autonomous feedback techniques have recently been used for qubit reset 9 and the stabilization of a single qubit state 10 , as well as for creating 11 and stabilizing 6 states of multipartite quantum systems. Unlike conventional, measurement-based schemes, an autonomous approach counter-intuitively uses engineered dissipation to fight decoherence [12][13][14][15] , obviating the need 1 arXiv:1307.4349v3 [quant-ph] 23 Oct 2013 for a complicated external feedback loop to correct errors, simplifying implementation. Instead the feedback loop is built into the Hamiltonian such that the steady state of the system in the presence of drives and dissipation is a Bell state, an essential building-block state for quantum information processing. Such autonomous schemes, broadly applicable to a variety of physical systems as demonstrated by a concurrent publication with trapped ion qubits 16 , will be an essential tool for the implementation of quantum-error correction.Here we implement a proposal 17 , tailored to the circuit Quantum Electrodynamics (cQED) architecture 18 , for stabilizing entanglement between two superconducting transmon qubits 19 . The qubits are dispersively coupled to an open cavity which acts as the dissipative reservoir. The cavity in our implementation is furthermore engineered to preferentially decay into a 50 Ω transmission line that we can monitor on demand. We show, using two-qubit quantum state tomography and high-fidelity single-shot readout, that the steady-state of the system reaches the target Bell state with a fidelity of 67 %, well above the 50 % threshold that witnesses entanglement. As discussed in Ref. 17, the fidelity can be further improved by monitoring the cavity output and performing conditional tomography when the output indicates that the two qubits are in the Bell state. We implemented this protocol via post-selection and demonstrated that the fidelity increased to ∼ 77 %.Our cQED setup, outlined schematically in Fig. 1a, consists of two individually addressable qubits, Alice and Bob, coupled dispersively to a three-dimensional (3D) rectangular copper cavity.The setup is described by...

Measuring a quantum system can randomly perturb its state. The strength and nature of this back-action depend on the quantity that is measured. In a partial measurement performed by an ideal apparatus, quantum physics predicts that the system remains in a pure state whose evolution can be tracked perfectly from the measurement record. We demonstrated this property using a superconducting qubit dispersively coupled to a cavity traversed by a microwave signal. The back-action on the qubit state of a single measurement of both signal quadratures was observed and shown to produce a stochastic operation whose action is determined by the measurement result. This accurate monitoring of a qubit state is an essential prerequisite for measurement-based feedback control of quantum systems.

Quantum error correction (QEC) is required for a practical quantum computer because of the fragile nature of quantum information [1]. In QEC, information is redundantly stored in a large Hilbert space and one or more observables must be monitored to reveal the occurrence of an error, without disturbing the information encoded in an unknown quantum state. Such observables, typically multi-qubit parities such as σ , must correspond to a special symmetry property inherent to the encoding scheme. Measurements of these observables, or error syndromes, must also be performed in a quantum non-demolition (QND) way and faster than the rate at which errors occur. Previously, QND measurements of quantum jumps between energy eigenstates have been performed in systems such as trapped ions [2][3][4], electrons [5], cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) [6, 7], nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers [8,9], and superconducting qubits [10,11]. So far, however, no fast and repeated monitoring of an error syndrome has been realized. Here, we track the quantum jumps of a possible error syndrome, the photon number parity of a microwave cavity, by mapping this property onto an ancilla qubit. This quantity is just the error syndrome required in a recently proposed scheme for a hardware-efficient protected quantum memory using Schrödinger cat states in a harmonic oscillator [12]. We demonstrate the projective nature of this measurement onto a parity eigenspace by observing the collapse of a coherent state onto even or odd cat states. The measurement is fast compared to the cavity lifetime, has a high single-shot fidelity, and has a 99.8% probability per single measurement of leaving the parity unchanged. In combination with the deterministic encoding of * current address: Center for Quantum Information, Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China † current address: Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstraße 25, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria; Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation,Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Otto-Hittmair-Platz 1, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria quantum information in cat states realized earlier [13,14], our demonstrated QND parity tracking represents a significant step towards implementing an active system that extends the lifetime of a quantum bit.Besides their necessity in quantum error correction and quantum information, QND measurements play a central role in quantum mechanics. The application of an ideal projective QND measurement yields a result corresponding to an eigenvalue of the measured operator, and projects the system onto the eigenstate associated with that eigenvalue. Moreover, the measurement must leave the system in that state, so that subsequent measure- Experimental device and parity measurement protocol (P) of a photon state. (a) Bottom half of the device containing a transmon qubit located in a trench and coupled to two waveguide cavities. The low frequency cavity, with ωs/2π = 7.216 GHz and a lifetime of τ0 = 5...